A Handful of Dust
by tarysande
Summary: Ten billion people over here die, so twenty billion over there can live. After the war, there are pieces to pick up, and lives to rebuild. And even with the Reapers gone, nothing is easy.
1. The Cruelest Month

For the most part, Garrus kept to the battery. This wasn't, in and of itself, strange. He'd kept to the battery as long as the _Normandy_'d had a battery to keep to. It was, by unspoken consensus, _his_ domain, and everybody knew it.

Once, and only once, he'd found a tech poking around the Thanix, trying to bring it back in line with Alliance regs. Never mind that Alliance regs would've had the guns running at five percent lower efficiency. He had no idea what memo Shepard sent out, or what words she'd spoken on her next tour of the ship, but no one ever showed up unannounced after that. Except Shepard herself, of course. And _no one_ touched the gun. Ever.

During recent months, he'd made more of an effort to mingle. Tried to fit in. He shot the shit with Vega. Avoided looking too hard at the endless stream of information on Liara's bank of screens while they chatted. Traded war stories with the Alliance crew. He played cards with Joker and Alenko, let Traynor teach him chess, shared the occasional drink with Doctor Chakwas, and visited Tali in engineering even when it inevitably meant a lecture about the inappropriateness of stealing power from one source to fuel another. (He pretended he didn't know what she was talking about. She kicked him. Hard.) Hell, he'd even voluntarily spent time with Javik, endless talk of primitives and threats of airlock death aside.

Partly he'd done it for Shepard's sake. He figured if he was out there taking the pulse of her crew, he'd be better equipped to help and more likely to catch and divert at least some of the interminable, unnecessary crap inevitably attempting to make its way to her. It hadn't taken long to see she was already drowning in it by the time she picked him up on Menae.

The other part of mingling with the crew was for his own benefit. To remember what it was to be part of a functional team. A good team. A solid team. The dark months after Omega weren't far enough away to be forgotten, but the team Shepard built to take out the Collectors had won him over eventually, and his task force on Palaven had stolen the last of the bitter sting from that old wound. He didn't want to slide backward. So he occasionally left the battery of his own accord. Played nice. Tried. Sometimes, he thought, even succeeded.

When they'd crashed, and after Chakwas had reluctantly released him from the medbay, he'd put in as much time as anyone—more, if Liara and Tali's fretting was any indication—on repairs. The Thanix could wait; whatever had grounded them couldn't. The sooner the _Normandy_ was spaceworthy again, the sooner they could head back and pick up Shepard.

She'd obviously done something, after all. The ramifications weren't entirely clear. Garrus had been out of commission at the time, though Joker spoke of some kind of wave of energy they'd been desperate to outrun. Ineffectually, as it turned out. The wave overtook them. EDI… stopped. The ship crashed. Nothing they tried could bring EDI back online, even though none of the damage the ship took seemed to indicate that kind of potential trauma to the resident AI.

Gently, carefully, Garrus moved EDI's body—her mobile platform—from the bridge down to the AI core. Joker protested, but stopped looking quite so haunted. With everyone else, at least. He wouldn't look Garrus in the eye. Of course, Garrus wasn't sure how much of it was to do with moving EDI, and how much was due to Joker's own feelings about leaving Shepard behind.

Hackett's orders. Alenko's insistence on those orders being followed. But Joker's hands had been the ones on the console. They all knew it. No one said anything. Truth was, Garrus felt bad for him, and not just because of EDI. Running, leaving Shepard behind? It was all a far cry from the heroics of the Collector base.

Where Shepard would have died, if not for Joker. By the dark circles under his eyes, Garrus was certain this thought had also occurred to the pilot, and it was one that kept him up nights.

Then, after a week of tinkering and fighting and rerouting and no small amount of blunt force, Traynor got the comms up.

Garrus almost wished she hadn't. He couldn't blame her, though. He was pretty sure she wished she hadn't been the bearer of that particular batch of intelligence either.

The Reapers were dead. Anderson was dead.

Shepard was presumed—

Shepard was missing.

Everyone looked haunted then. And Garrus kept to the battery. He switched his sleep cycle so there'd be less likelihood of running into the majority of the crew. He worked longer hours. He didn't want to witness the lifeless slump of a crew already in mourning. He didn't want to hear Alenko's excuses or his apologies, or the way Liara's breath hitched every time she looked at him; it was bad enough he couldn't avoid the scrolling biofeedback that told him too much. His visor's audio link blasted endless dance mixes. He skipped past anything slow. He nearly threw the visor across the room when it dared play a tango. His tango. Shepard's tango. The dance mixes were better. Especially if he played them so loud he couldn't think.

That's what he told himself, anyway. Sometimes he almost believed it.

Once a day, he made the trek up to Shepard's quarters and fed her hamster. The fish, cared for by the VI she'd paid such an astronomical sum for, swam on, indifferent to their owner's absence.

_Death_, came the word, unbidden, taking root before he could push it away.

No.

He couldn't afford that word. Not even in the privacy of his own thoughts.

And yet it always found him when he was alone in her room, surrounded by her things, like cold fingers trailing down his back. Like a persistent whisper no music could possibly drown out. _Death, death, death._

He could have brought the rodent down to the battery with him and spared himself the daily dose of despair the empty room and soft music and faint scent of her caused him. He thought about it. Once he went so far as to lift the glass box and take three steps toward the door before immediately turning around and returning it to its proper place. The hamster squeaked at him and hid, as usual. He gave it a little extra food in mute apology.

After the memorial Alenko insisted on, Garrus took his usual trip up to Shepard's cabin, and let himself linger a little longer than usual. He dropped food into the hamster's cage, and the husk head—_Yorick_, Shepard called it, and told him he'd understand when they finally saw that Elcor production of _Hamlet_—screamed at him, just like every other day. The SR-1 model in the glass cabinet was crooked; he fixed it. He thought about smashing Sovereign, but stopped himself when he realized Shepard would perch his head next to Yorick's if he dared.

Then he took the stairs down to her bedroom for the first time since—since, and straightened the pillows that had fallen when the ship crashed. The smell of her was stronger here, still clinging to the sheets. He turned away before he could think about how long that scent would last. Another week? A month? He reset Petrovsky's chess board, and then bent to retrieve several pieces of broken glass from the floor. Water he'd left on the table before everything went to hell? One of her ever-present but rarely-used wineglasses? He wasn't sure.

A particularly sharp edge cut deep into the pad of his forefinger, and he stared down, uncomprehending, at the bead of blue blood welling up. He felt pain, but distantly, almost unwillingly. Like an afterthought. Like his body was saying, _oh, this again._

Mostly he just felt angry. Suddenly. Sharply. Not at the little wound. Not even at the glass that'd cut him. He thought he was angry with himself. At that damned Mako for taking him out during the final push. At everyone who dared turn their hopeless eyes on him, silently begging him to give up. At the nameplate he'd refused to mount on the crew deck's wall of bitter losses.

He was angry with Shepard. And he was angry with himself for being angry at her.

Forget his finger. _That_ was pain.

For all his talk of ruthless calculus, somehow he hadn't expected this loss. Everyone else, maybe. He'd always believed, no matter what, Shepard would be the survivor left standing at the end. He'd have died to see that made reality. And instead, here he was. Bleeding in her empty room, angry with ghosts.

The door swished open, the sound like an insult. If he'd had a weapon, he might've pointed it at the intruder; he was that angry. Through the glass case of model ships, he saw a flash of purple.

"Garrus?" Tali asked, "Are you in here?"

He dropped his handful of glass on the table and moved into her line of sight. Tali hovered in the doorway, keeping the door open with her presence as if she couldn't bear to step all the way inside.

"I keep asking EDI things like, 'Can you tell me where Garrus is?' and, 'If we recalibrate the capacitor input can we improve drive core functionality by at least .6%?'" Tali admitted, her voice breaking on the final word. She wrapped her arms tight across her chest, almost a hug. "And she doesn't answer. I was so opposed to her, in the beginning. So offended. Now I'd give anything to hear her say, 'That course of action would be unwise, Tali'Zorah.'"

"Best part of working with Shepard," he said, trying for humor and failing miserably. "Having to eat your own words a dozen times a day."

Finally entering the room so the door could close behind her, Tali bowed her head, the lights of her eyes momentarily lost to the shadow of her hood. "We're leaving," she said. "I wanted to be the one to tell you."

His mandibles flicked. Not a smile, but a little of his irrational anger ebbed. "You say that like it's not the best news I've had in weeks."

Three weeks and two days since they crashed. Three weeks and two days since _no matter what happens here…_

Almost a month of this, a different kind of hell. One without Shepard to follow.

Tali didn't look up. If anything, her posture shifted into something more miserable. "We're not going to the Citadel."

He blinked. His cut finger throbbed. "What?"

"Sam got Admiral Hackett on the comm, right after—you know. The service. He's ordered the _Normandy_ back to Earth. Planetside. Immediately."

Garrus swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, gut suddenly churning. His own voice sounded as broken and sharp and cutting as the glass when he said, "They found her."

"I don't know, Garrus. Kaidan spoke to the admiral. He… didn't look good, after. Then Engineer Adams said the ship was as good to fly as he could tell without EDI to verify it." Tali shivered slightly, and then turned her head to gaze at the lazily swimming fish. "She had so many backups. There… don't you think there must be a way?"

"I'm not giving up."

Tali nodded, the light from the aquarium throwing strange shadows over the faceplate of her helmet. "The admiral said the relays aren't working. We have to travel FTL."

_So slow_, he thought. _Too slow. _Out loud, he mused, "The relays. EDI. The Reapers."

"And the geth," Tali added, so quietly he almost missed it. "Admiral Hackett said the geth were affected the same way EDI was. Turned off like a switch was flipped." She paused, then took a step toward him, tilting her face up so he could see the flicker of the lights of her eyes. "What did she do, Garrus?"

"Saved us," he said, each word weighty as a million lives.

"At what cost?"

"Ten billion people over here die, so twenty billion over there can live." He put a hand to his head, realizing too late it was the one still bleeding. The angle of Tali's head was the equivalent of a quarian frown; he'd learned that much over the years. She didn't say anything, though. He guessed she'd learned that much about _him._ "Dammit, Shepard. Dammit."

For the space of several long minutes, Shepard's soft music was the only sound in the room.

Finally, Tali said, "I've been feeding her pets."

Sheer force of will let him pull himself together enough to reply, "That's why the little guy's looking so fat. So have I."

"I should have known," she said. "I should have asked." So suddenly he almost jerked away before he realized what she was doing, she reached out and grabbed his hand. It felt wrong to feel only three long fingers curled around his instead of five shorter, slenderer ones. "Garrus, I'm so—"

"Don't," he said, unable to keep the low note of keening from his subharmonics. "Not yet." He squeezed her hand. "But thank you."

"A few more days," she said. "That's all."

_It's an eternity_, he thought, but out loud he said nothing.

"We should—"

"Go?" he interrupted, wanting to smile. His mandibles gave a sick little flutter. "Yeah."

"Maybe—"

"Yeah," he repeated. "I know. Maybe."

He left Shepard's music on, as always. He didn't look back. Forward. They were in the elevator, decidedly not talking about the histories of their people, when he felt the ship begin to shudder and move around them, lifting skyward after its long rest.

Forward was the way to go.


	2. Out of the Dead Land

**Author's Note:** I should have mentioned in the first chapter: this story will contain spoilers across the entire series, up to and including the Citadel DLC. For those of you who've read my other fic, this Shepard and this Garrus will be familiar. It's likely references to the other fic in their continuity (listed on my profile) will be made (and will be relevant.)

* * *

When it came right down to it, Garrus didn't like rain any more than he liked cold.

In Vancouver, rain and cold somehow combined to create a third meteorological phenomenon, infinitely more miserable than either of the others on their own. And it never seemed to stop. He wasn't sure how much of the murkiness in the sky was left over from the terrible damage the Reapers had wrought and how much was just natural cloud cover, but they'd been planetside nearly three days and he had yet to see anything resembling the sun. When he bothered looking out the window, he was met with endless grey. Grey rainclouds snagged on grey mountains above white-frothed grey sea. Grey husks of buildings, half-toppled like broken toys. Grey wounds scarring the landscape, left behind by Reaper lasers.

Reminded uncomfortably of London, and of everything they'd lost there alongside everything they'd gained, he pulled the curtains closed. It was still grey inside his room—grey blankets, grey pillow, grey rations, grey chair at a grey desk—but at least nothing was broken. The rain pattered against the glass, a ceaseless refrain. After a while, Expel 10 drowned it out.

He kept to the quarters he'd been given the way he'd kept to the battery on the _Normandy_, though here, at least, he did have Shepard's hamster for company. He didn't know what would happen to the fish, but an aquarium wasn't as easy to transport as a little glass box. The VI would take care of them. Maybe the _Normandy_'s next CO would also have a thing for Khar'shan snapping eels. It was probably his imagination, but the stupid rodent actually seemed to be getting used to him. Finally. Once or twice, out of the corner of his eye, Garrus even saw it—_him_, Shepard's voice admonished, _he's got a name, Garrus_—completely out of his hidey hole, watching.

The first day, he tried to send messages to anyone who might know the whereabouts of his family. It didn't go well. Comms were down everywhere, ships were still limping in via FTL, and military messages were claiming virtually all available bandwidth. _Do you know what happened to the Vakarians?_ simply didn't have priority. The harried-looking boy in Alliance blue who brought Garrus his lunch said he'd heard from a friend who'd heard from a friend, who'd overheard the brass talking, that they were trying to gather the remaining galactic leaders in Vancouver, but he didn't know if Primarch Victus or Urdnot Wrex were amongst them. The kid thought both of them had survived the battle, though. Some said the Council was alive; others said they were dead. Every bit of truth was painted with eighteen shades of rumor, and nothing was certain except Hackett was alive, in charge, and not planning to abandon Vancouver any time soon.

Also on the first day, Liara came to see him. He told her he was fine; she looked as though she didn't believe him. "And you?" he asked in return, "how're you handling the sudden lack of information?"

The look in her eyes made him regret asking, but she replied easily enough, "Perhaps I ought to see it as a vacation."

"Perhaps," he agreed. "But somehow I doubt you will."

"No more than you," she said softly, her fingers warm against the back of his unarmored hand.

On the second day, he sat down with the busted, burned armor he'd been wearing in London and tried to make it usable again without thinking about other broken suits of armor he'd tried to fix over the years. The hole he'd left on purpose after Omega. Shepard's shattered gear on the _Valiant._

That didn't go well, either. Not the fixing or the not-thinking.

He hadn't looked all that closely at the armor afterward, but now? Now he figured he owed Doctor Chakwas his life yet again. He even had to admit that maybe—just maybe—Shepard had been right to send him back after all. Looking at the state of his suit, he didn't know how he'd managed to remain conscious, let alone hobble to the ship mostly upright. Most of the internal systems were fried. The silvery-grey was blackened and most of the blue enamel was melted. A few of the more flammable pieces were just… gone.

Frankly, he'd seen Cannibals with better gear. Sobering.

Tali stopped by and gave his efforts an incredulous lift of her shoulders. "I once told Shepard with some eezo and a circuit board I could have a piece of scrap metal making precision jumps, but even I don't think that suit's salvageable, Garrus."

"Maybe not," he said, "but my dad gave it to me." _It was Shepard's favorite. _"Not like I've got any—"

"Guns to calibrate?" she offered. His mandibles flicked weakly. Still, she helped him scrape off the worst of the surface damage, and she _almost_ fixed the onboard computer. (Or so she said. It still looked pretty screwed to him. And _almost_ wasn't going to deliver a dose of medi-gel when he needed it.)

On the third day, when the summons came, Garrus thought about ignoring it. He wasn't Alliance, wasn't tied to their chain of command, and even though he'd suspected it was coming, he found when the time came, he didn't much feel like talking. If they'd sent anyone other than James Vega to collect him, he might've just blown them off altogether.

"Scars," Vega said.

"Jimmy."

"Gonna stay in there all day?"

"Thinking about it."

"He just wants to talk, you know. Wants to know how it all went down from our end. He's good, man."

Garrus snorted, leaning back against his desk. It was probably too flimsy to bear his weight, but after an ominous creak it held. "Ahh, Vega. Spoken like someone who wasn't around for the first hundred life-threatening missions Hackett threw our way. I'm not just carrying a grudge. I'm carrying a hundred of them. Because Shepard never did. And someone had to."

"Hey, everyone was just doing their—"

"Jobs. Yeah. I know. Funny thing about grudges. Don't always make sense."

Vega shifted from one foot to the other. He didn't have to say anything. Reluctantly, Garrus pushed himself away from the desk on a sigh and followed the big man out into the rain.

#

Admiral Steven Hackett looked as tired as it was possible for a person to look. Garrus didn't think he was imagining gaunter cheeks, or deeper creases at the corners of his eyes, and the dark shadows of exhaustion beneath those eyes were purple enough to be bruises. The eyes themselves were clear and sharp as ever, however, and by the time he turned to face Garrus, the admiral's posture dared him to question his fitness. Garrus didn't.

"Mr. Vakarian."

Garrus didn't bother correcting him. He hadn't been C-Sec for a long time, and what good was a Reaper advisor in a post-Reaper world? He had no idea where he currently stood in the Hierarchy. Or if the Hierarchy was at all functional. _Mister_ was quaint, and rather human, but at least it was polite. "Admiral."

"Thank you for speaking with me."

"I haven't said anything yet," Garrus replied. "And I'm not entirely sure I will. I fail to see why I'm here. I've worked for a lot of agencies over the years, but none of them were the Alliance."

Hackett regarded him with appraising eyes. Everything about the man's demeanor was calculated to project an image of casual control—the stance, the hands linked behind his back. It was the first time Garrus had ever seen the man out of a dress uniform. But he wasn't fooled. Or taken in. "I've debriefed the _Normandy_'s Alliance crew and most of Commander Shepard's other recruits. They say she… trusted you."

Garrus was also tired. Too tired for games, certainly. Tired enough not to care if his attitude instigated an intergalactic incident. At the end of the day, he didn't particularly feel he owed Hackett anything. Garrus had been the one who saw Shepard's face after Aratoht, after all. And after Alchera. "There's no need to be disingenuous. You know we're—were lovers. It was hardly a secret." He stumbled over the past tense and tried not to feel like a traitor for using it at all. "If you want to take her to task for breaking regulations, you should know she doesn't play favorites. She never lets her feelings get in the way of her work. Yeah, I was at her six most of the time. If you have a problem with the way she runs her—"

"You misunderstand me," Hackett interrupted. "Commander Shepard's personal relationships are not the subject of this conversation."

Garrus's mandibles fluttered. He wondered if Hackett knew turian expressions well enough to know how disconcerted he was.

"I would like to recruit you, Mr. Vakarian. For a rather… sensitive mission."

Garrus shook his head, wondering how rude it would be to just head for the door. "If you need a pet Spectre, send Alenko. I'm sure he'll gladly ask how high if you order him to jump."

It was a nice use of a human idiom, if he said so himself. Joker, he thought, would've been proud.

The only outward indication of Hackett's disapproval was the brief compression of his lips and a faint crease between his brows. His voice, however, was still damnably calm when he replied, "In spite of his Spectre status, Major Alenko's allegiances are too well known. He bleeds Alliance blue. This isn't an Alliance mission. It can't be."

"Of course not," Garrus said. "Look, I'm not her. I'm not going to drop everything and race to do your bidding just because you ask. Expect. Demand."

Here, finally, Garrus saw a crack in the man's cool demeanor. Hackett's eyes narrowed and his shoulders stiffened with tension Garrus never would have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it. "She was an Alliance Marine—"

Garrus gestured dismissively, sweeping his hand to one side. "Sure she was. When you wanted her to be. Just like she was a Spectre when you wanted that. Just like she was nobody when she woke from the dead wearing the wrong color uniform."

"If this is about her time with Cerberus—"

"She was never _with_ Cerberus," Garrus snapped, so sharp and so sudden, and subharmonics dripping with such disgust, he made Hackett blink.

After a long moment, Hackett said slowly, "I… understand."

"Do you? Do you really?" The strange thing was he thought perhaps—maybe for the first time—Hackett _did_. Garrus exhaled and felt the fight going out of him. Damn. "So what is it? You think you can succeed where Alenko failed? Convince me to see the error of my ways? Stand up before a grieving galaxy and give them some kind of closure? That _is_ something you can get Alenko to do, because I sure as hell won't."

Hackett said nothing, but as Garrus spoke, he turned his back and pulled open a drawer. His desk, Garrus noted, was just as rickety and grey as the one in his own quarters. From the drawer, Hackett removed a black velvet box, thin and not quite square. He handed it over with a strange, heady sort of ceremony that made Garrus' stomach drop. He couldn't stop his hand from shaking when he reached for it.

Garrus wanted to throw it back in Hackett's face, to storm from the room, to walk and walk and keep on walking until things started to make sense. Instead, he lifted the hinged lid.

The set of dog tags within was battered, the edges dinged, a little of the red enamel worn. He didn't need to flip them over to know whose they were.

He couldn't swallow his low note of grief. He wasn't sure he wanted to. He closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the admiral's expression. "You found her."

The ragged sound of Hackett's inhale was enough to make Garrus look at him. The expression wasn't the pity Garrus expected, or even the sorrow that would have made sense. It was anger. Blind anger. "On the contrary," the admiral ground out. "Those were _sent_ to us. With a lock of hair and fingernail clippings folded into a scrap of paper. Even with things the way they are, it didn't take much to find out the DNA was a match. Granted, after what happened with the Cerberus clone—"

"No," Garrus whispered, the word hardly louder than the breath of air it took to speak it. He cleared his throat. Tried again. "No. These are her tags. Not a copy."

Hackett pushed a hand through his hair and paced three steps before turning to face Garrus again. A hint of the dreadful weight seemed to lift from the older man's shoulders. "I… had hoped you'd be able to confirm it."

Garrus felt himself nodding, agreeing, but his thoughts were elsewhere, racing around possibilities and plans. Hopes. Fears. His visor beeped a little warning about his heart rate. He ignored it.

"And that's the sensitive mission?" Garrus finally managed. "You want me to find her?"

"We'll give you a ship, Mr. Vakarian. Supplies. Resources. Crew. None of them flying Alliance colors overtly, I'm afraid. We cannot be seen interfering. Too many things hang in the balance."

"I don't give a shit about politics."

"Nevertheless. Hating them doesn't make them cease to exist."

"This is _Shepard._ You _owe_ her."

Hackett inclined his head. "Please don't imagine I'm unaware just how much I owe the commander, Mr. Vakarian."

"I want the _Normandy_."

Under any other circumstances, Garrus would have felt proud of the way he made Hackett flinch. The man's eyes widened. His heartbeat spiked. "That's not possible."

"It's Shepard's ship."

The cool mask slammed down again, and the only evidence he'd ever been unsettled at all was the slightly-elevated heart rate revealed by Garrus' visor. "It's the Alliance's ship."

"It's _Shepard's_ ship." Garrus straightened to his full height and glared down at the admiral. To his credit, Hackett didn't give an inch. He merely tilted his head slightly upward and met Garrus glare for glare. "I want the _Normandy._ It's not negotiable. I want a say in the crew. I don't know what the hell's going on with the Council, and I'm not demanding I be made a Spectre, but I need some kind of authority."

Hackett looked like he wanted to sigh, but he didn't.

Garrus clenched his hands into fists. "You're asking me because you know I'll do what it takes. I'm saying yes because if there's a chance she's alive out there, I won't stop until I find her."

"She may not be alive. We may be looking at another Cerberus situation. The balance of power is entirely in flux at the moment, Mr. Vakarian, and she has been a prominent figure for the past four years."

"You think they want to use her for _leverage_?"

Hackett arched an eyebrow. "You don't? Otherwise why the subterfuge? Why not just send her home?" The admiral lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. "This isn't a smash-and-grab mission, Mr. Vakarian. If you go in with guns blazing you may find only a fresh corpse no longer worth the trouble, and the galaxy won't know where to lay the blame. The Reapers wanted us dead. The people who'd go through this trouble? They're more dangerous. They want power."

Garrus inhaled, held the breath, and exhaled slowly. Then he said, "I can be subtle."

"So your dossier says." Hackett gave him a shrewd look. "I wouldn't have asked otherwise. Very well. You'll have the _Normandy_. Doubtless her pilot, and as much of her crew as is willing to part with their Alliance blues for the time being, if you're amenable. It'll take a few days to arrange. No more than a week." Before Garrus could speak his rising protest, Hackett explained, "With things the way they are, everything takes three times as long. We have no idea what you're up against out there, and I'm not sending you in blind. Don't worry about the time you're landlocked. Use it. I'll get you as much comm clearance as I'm able; find yourself some people you trust."

Garrus inclined his head, half to accept and half to hide his shame that he'd been about to argue. Hackett was, of course, right. He could do a lot in a few days, if he didn't cloister himself in his little grey room. "Sir."

Hackett huffed a breath, but the faint curve of his lips was wry. "Wondered what it'd take to get a 'sir' out of you. Go on, Vakarian. We've both got work to do."

When Garrus reluctantly proffered the black velvet box, however, Hackett only shook his head. "I'd've given them to you anyway," he said. "See they get back to their rightful owner."

Garrus didn't immediately return to his grim little room after leaving Hackett's command post. Instead, he walked the streets, shoulders hunched against the ceaseless weather, until he reached the swath of sooty sand separating walking path from water. A Reaper corpse lay partially submerged in the bay, silent and still and still too huge to comprehend, even through the misty veil of rain. Dead, yes. Garrus found himself wondering what would be done with all the hulking bodies left behind. His shiver had little to do with the cold.

Halfway back to his grey quarters, Garrus caught sight of something strange out of the corner of his eye. Color. One lone tree, swaying in the wind and battered by drizzle, had valiantly put forth a few tentative pink flowers. He stared at them for a long time. Then he flipped open the box and gazed down at Shepard's dog tags. Rain beaded on their surface, but the grey? Suddenly the grey didn't see quite so grim after all.

Not with a little hope in the world.


	3. The Lady of Situations

Someone was in his room.

Garrus might've had logistics and plans and lists running through his head faster than he could keep up, but enough people had tried to kill him over the years that he wasn't careless. The thin wall of the prefab unit did little to hide the heat signature within. Turian, he thought. Staying still. He didn't think it was an ambush, unless it was someone stupid enough not to bring backup. Still, it didn't hurt to be cautious. Shifting the velvet box to one hand, he unclipped his sidearm with the other, pushed the handle down with his elbow, and nudged the door open with a shoulder.

The woman seated at his desk didn't turn her head when he entered. Even without the sudden familiarity of scent and the information revealed by his visor's biometrics, he'd have recognized the curve of her skull and the elegant crest of her fringe anywhere. Try as he might, he just couldn't comprehend how _his little sister_ had come to be _here_, here of all places, when last he'd heard she'd been just barely escaping Palaven.

Not that he was complaining. The flood of sudden relief nearly made him stagger.

Without looking up from whatever she was doing to his belongings—stealing his good mods, probably, if past experience held—she snorted and said, "I'd've jammed your sensors and hid under a tactical cloak if I didn't want you to know I was here, G." He swallowed, lowering his gun and trying to find his voice. Back still to him, his sister lifted his burned, busted computer and said, "This is beyond saving, by the way. Can't believe you even tried. Though you've gotten better since I last scoffed at you while peeking over your shoulder."

"I, uh," he shook his head. "Wasn't me. Friend of mine. Quarian. Doesn't matter. Look, Solana, what are—"

Solana propped one arm against the desk, turned at the waist, and smirked. "That explains that. It's damned precision work."

"_Solana_," he repeated, ignoring her little jab. "What are you _doing_ here?"

"_I've_ been here for ages. Would you believe it's been raining for twenty-three days? Straight?" He sent her an incredulous look and she explained, "A scout team picked us up on Palaven, so when the call to mobilize came, we were pulled along for the ride. Warship wasn't going to go off-course just to drop off a few civilians." Her mandibles gave a little flick of distress and she bowed her head. "Just as well. From what I gather, numbers out of the Citadel evac aren't looking great."

Garrus pushed back against the sea of faces—names—colleagues, friends, refugees—threatening to pull him under. Later. Not until—later. "And… Dad? He's—is he—"

Solana sighed. "Tired. Sad. But healthy. Working with Primarch Victus to keep the turian encampment running smoothly, though Spirits only know what we're going to do when the dextro rations run out. He'd have come if I'd told him, but I didn't want to get his hopes up. This is the fourth time I've been down here on rumors the _Normandy_ was back. Not as easy as keeping an eye on passenger manifests, with intel the way it is. Might as well be sending messages by bird. Or rabid pyjak. Does this planet even have pyjaks?" She shook her head, and he saw how clearly she, too, was tired and sad. "Garrus," she said, and his stomach dropped at the shift in her voice. "I—we all—I'm sorry. About her. About… everything. I can't imagine."

He thought she probably could, a little. Unless she knew something he didn't, the man she loved was, at the moment, as lost to her as Shepard was to him. Perhaps forever. Even before—even before the Crucible, it had been weeks since he'd had any word at all from his Reaper Task Force's second-in-command. And even if Naxus had managed to survive, Trebia was a long, long way from Sol in a galaxy suddenly bereft of mass relays.

He took another step forward, setting the velvet box down and glancing at the order his sister had made of the mess he'd left on his desk when he went to talk to Hackett.

That step brought him close enough to notice what he hadn't earlier: his desk's fragile little human chair was pushed to one side and Solana was sitting in something else entirely. Mechanical. With wheels. She didn't quite fit properly; it was a human contraption and not a turian one. She'd obviously done some remodeling—unsurprisingly—to better accommodate her spurs.

Or her right spur, in any case. The left was gone, along with the rest of her leg below the knee.

"Ahh," she said, before he could ask. She didn't look down; her gaze focused straight ahead, at the grey curtains pulled closed to hide his grey view. "This. Yeah. I'd get up and hug you but I'm afraid you've got to come to me."

"Dad said you _broke_ your leg." Shock frayed his voice and left the edges harder and sharper than he intended.

She lifted her shoulders and tilted her head. It unnerved him that she could smile, though he wasn't blind enough to ignore the lingering pain in her eyes. "I did. Right off. Luckily my promising career was never in dance."

"This isn't a—"

She sighed, holding her hands wide in a placating gesture to silence him. "It did break. Badly. Multiple shattered bones badly. Told Dad to leave me behind badly. He wouldn't. We were out of medi-gel, in the middle of nowhere. It got infected. By the time we got to the ship, it was too late for them to do anything except stop the infection from spreading." Her subharmonics told him she wasn't quite as nonchalant as she was trying to appear, but he didn't draw attention to it. When she spoke again, it was in the weary voice of someone repeating words they'd already said over and over in an attempt to make them more palatable, more real, less terrifying, "They've made huge strides with clone-tissue replacement. Just as soon as things calm down again, I'll be good as new."

Because he still couldn't find words to tell her how sorry he was—how glad she'd survived—how much he wished things were different, he crouched down beside her and she leaned forward to accept his embrace, wrapping her own arms tight around him. "Damn, Garrus," she murmured against the curve of his cowl. "It's good to see you."

He let her go when she leaned back against his arms, and she swatted at him. "One pitying look and I'll kill you in your sleep," she said. "I'm fine. Look better than you. Do they feed you on that ship?"

Garrus couldn't find a smile. Not even for his sister. He did reach for her hand and squeeze it. "If I can't pity you, you can't pity me."

She nodded, but her tawny eyes didn't leave his face and he found he had to look away first.

The expression on her face made her look too much like their mother, and, unbidden, some of the last words his Mom had ever spoken to him rose in his head and refused to be pushed away again. _What have you seen, to make you so sad, so hard, so broken? What have you lost, to make you so afraid?_

_Oh, Mom. I didn't know. I didn't know how bad it could get. I didn't have the first damned clue._

"I am sorry I don't have any word from Palaven," he added, though it was hardly a cheerier subject. "Nothing recent, anyway, and I don't suppose…?"

Shaking her head, Solana guided her wheelchair away from the desk. "It's a long way without relays."

Garrus made a note to ask Hackett about the relays, too, when next they spoke. They'd built the damned Crucible from nothing in mere months, and all those great minds were still assembled, presumably working on the problem of the disrupted mass relay network. Even without convenient blueprints, they had to have _something_ to work with.

Though in a strange twist of finding the positive in a resounding negative, he supposed it meant even with a month's head start, the people who had Shepard couldn't have gone _too_ far. Hell. Maybe they'd never left Earth at all, though evidently Hackett seemed to think they weren't planetside. Garrus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Even the air smelled grey. The vividness of the red on Shepard's dog tags and the faint sweet pink of the flowers came to mind. _I don't know what to do with grey._

One damned thing at a time.

Shepard had a saying for this too. Needle in a haystack. He'd never seen a haystack, but he understood the meaning well enough to feel a moment of sinking dread.

"Something I can help with?" Solana asked gently.

"No," he replied automatically. He opened his eyes in time to catch her frown and he sighed. "Maybe. Say you want to hide the most recognizable woman in the galaxy. How do you do it? Where do you put her? And why the hell do you bother taunting her people, when most of them are already convinced she's dead?"

"Garrus," she said, and though perhaps it wasn't quite pity, he could hear worry in her voice, and fear.

He flipped open the velvet box with force enough to jangle the dog tags within. Solana reached out and flipped one of the tags over. Running the tip of her talon over the name pressed into the metal, she shook her head and hummed a low note of distress.

"I'll find her," he said.

She closed the box again and pushed it away as if the sight of it hurt her. "What else do you have to go on?"

Garrus thought about lying, about deflecting, but in the end, settled for the truth. "Not much. Proof of DNA."

"Garrus," she repeated, too quietly.

"I know," he replied.

"She could be—"

"I know."

"They could be trying to extort—"

He lifted his head and met her gaze for gaze, unflinching. "Solana. I know. It doesn't matter."

Pacing to the window, he threw back the curtains. The sun still hid, but the rain had temporarily stopped; the absence of pattering drops against the glass was oddly unnerving.

"I'm not asking you to give up," she said. "I'm just asking you to think about all the possibilities." Outside, a team of techs in Alliance blue was dragging a fragment of broken Reaper—a leg, Garrus thought, a broken leg—through the mud and toward some unknown scrap heap. Graveyard. Whatever they were supposed to call it.

"This isn't the first kidnapping case I've worked, Sol."

_Or the first murder._

"Sure. But you've got no clues—"

"Yet."

"No crime scene to comb for evidence. No—"

"I get it."

"Do you?" she asked plaintively, without accusation. "Because I understand better now. The last time she… you disappeared for two years with hardly a trace, Garrus. You'll have to forgive me my concern. I… I don't want to lose you like that again."

"This isn't the same thing." One of the techs slipped in the mud and went sprawling, taking three of his fellows down with him in a tangle of limbs. A fifth jumped backward, avoiding the spill, and then laughed as he helped his friends up. Garrus shook his head. Laughing. Dragging Reaper tech around and _laughing_.

In that instant, the laughter was more alien to him than the remnants of sentient machine.

He resented their mirth. Shepard, he thought, would have joined in it. And then she'd probably have headed out to help them pull their burden wherever they were taking it.

"And are you… I'm sorry to say it, G, but are you sure you can trust them? The people who want to send you off to look for her? Spirits know you're like a varren with a pyjak in its teeth when you've got something under your plates. Are they sending you out to chase shadows so you won't be the voice of dissension, so you won't interrupt? Are they feeding you hope to keep you quiet?"

This, finally, was enough to pull his attention away from the mud-splattered, still-laughing techs outside. Solana had moved closer while his attention was elsewhere. It unnerved him to have to peer down so far to look her in the eyes. "Keep quiet about what?" he asked.

She scowled, mandibles flicking in irritation he didn't understand. "You had that Battlespace reporter on your ship the whole time. What do you think she was doing? Broadcasting cooking tips and fashion advice? Commander Shepard might be the most recognizable woman in the galaxy, G, but I guarantee you're the most recognizable turian."

The thought made him vaguely uncomfortable, but he only shrugged and said, "So?"

Solana flung her hands up. "Spirits, Garrus! Did you miss the part where your commander became the galaxy's most effective politician? Peace between the turians and the krogan? Peace between the quarians and the _geth_? A united galactic force fighting the damned Reapers far from their own homeworlds? You'd better believe if she were here, the whole galaxy would be looking to her for guidance right now."

"I'm not Shepard. And I'm no politician."

After a long-suffering sigh, she explained as if to a small child, "You were the Turian Hierarchy's Reaper Advisor, G, and against all odds we've just decisively won a war against the enemy you prepared the Hierarchy to fight. You were Commander Shepard's right hand. More. Much more, according to the tabloids. Wake up. You're a politician whether you want to be or not. People will look to you because they want to look to her, and you're the closest thing they've got."

Before he could think of a reply that wasn't just outright denial, they were interrupted by a shout from outside.

"Vakarian!" A moment later, the door slammed inward, bouncing off the metal wall with a heavy clang. Garrus almost reached for his gun again, until Zaeed Massani, looking as ill-tempered as usual, strode in. "Where's your goddamned security? Could've strolled in and blown you to shit while you had your trousers down with no one the wise—oh. Uh. Didn't think you'd have company."

Any other time, the sudden shift in Zaeed's expression would have made him laugh. Instead, Garrus just snorted, and Solana gave a little wave. "Zaeed Massani, meet my sister, Solana Vakarian. Sol, stay away from him. He's bad news."

"Says the bastard who took down half of Omega with one gun and a bad fucking attitude."

Garrus did not miss the speculative glance his sister threw his way. She said, "Sounds like quite the story."

"Sol—" Garrus began to protest.

"Story! You saying you don't know? This bloody bastard—"

"Has work to do," Garrus interrupted. "After he sees his sister back to the turian encampment."

"Like hell," Zaeed growled. "I know you're in here feeling goddamn sorry for yourself, and you're going to drink a fucking pint or ten with me whether you like it or not, and whatever shit you think needs calibrating can wait until another goddamned day."

"I've got time," Solana added in her most obnoxious just-try-to-stop-me voice. "Wouldn't say no to a drink myself."

"That's more like it."

"I'm the Vakarian with the winning personality," she said sweetly. "He's the one with—"

"The stick up his arse?"

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, mandibles flicking into a brief smile. "I think I like you already, Mr. Massani."

"Just Zaeed," he said.

Garrus found a break in the banter long enough to ask, "What the hell are you doing here, Zaeed?"

Zaeed lifted his eyebrows and his lips twisted. "Nice to see you too. Met up with the big krogan. Wrex. He said the Alliance was regrouping here. Figured this'd be the best place to wait for one of you arseholes to show up and tell me what the fuck happened out there."

"Your guess is as good as mine," Garrus said, shaking his head, trying not to look at the sad little velvet box. "Though I'll tell you what I know."

"Over drinks. I'm not listening to that shit sober." Garrus pretended not to understand the sudden ghost of emotion that flickered over Zaeed's face before the merc returned his attention to Solana and said, "He really never told you about Omega?"

"He really never tells me anything."

"Well, my girl, my stories are better, but I can bore you with one or two of his to warm up."

Solana smirked. "I look forward to it. Especially if Garrus isn't going to bother joining us…"

"Fine," Garrus groaned. "_Fine._ One drink. One."

Before he left, Garrus snagged the dog tags from their box and tucked them into his own suit. For safekeeping, he told himself.

Zaeed was right, after all.

The security really was abominable.


	4. A Heap of Broken Images

_She is five years old._

_She is curled up under the table—no, in the bottom of the pantry, yes, the bottom of the pantry, trying not to sneeze because the bag of flour next to her has a tear in it and every time she moves another puff of it fills the little space she's crammed herself into. She hid when she heard her parents come in from the garden; she's supposed to be sleeping, but instead she went looking for the cookies Mama keeps hidden in the purple jar. She'll be in big trouble if they find her, so she tries to keep very, very still while her parents stand just on the other side of the door and talk. Her left elbow hurts where she banged it against the door. The flour tickles her nose._

"_Dearest," says her papa, low and quiet, in the serious voice he hardly ever uses. It scares her, the serious voice. She likes his laughing voice much better, like when he picks her up and swings her in a circle, or throws her as high as he can even though it always makes Mama shriek. It's okay, because he never, ever drops her. "We can't keep doing this. It's worse every time."_

_Her mama gives a little sob. "She keeps asking when she'll have a brother or sister. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say."_

_In the dark, breathing flour, trying not to get caught, she listens to her mama cry and cry and cry._

_Later, she crawls into her mama's lap and rests her head on her chest, comforted by thump of the heartbeat under her ear and the arms that automatically curl around her. Her mama smells like the garden and cookies and roses._

"_Sweetheart," Mama says, running her hand through her hair, pulling the tangles loose with gentle fingers. Every time she moves, the scent of roses rises from her wrists like a hug. "How did you get flour in your hair?"_

"_It's okay, Mama," she says. "It's okay."_

#

"Shit, man. She's waking up."

"You've gotta be kidding me. That stuff could keep a fucking elcor under for a week."

"Yeah, well, it's not enough. Look. Look at her eyes."

"Fuck. Gimme a minute."

"I don't know if we've got a whole—okay. There she—"

#

_She is sixteen years old._

_Her hands are bleeding, her nails broken down to the quick from scrabbling up the rough-barked tree. Her left wrist throbs from when she fell and caught herself badly. The heavy weight of the screwdriver in her pocket is not as comforting as she wishes it was. She should've taken the gun. It was stupid not to take the gun. A screwdriver's not going to help her up here. If she had the gun—_

_She can't breathe. When she closes her eyes, even to blink, just to blink, she sees blood and fire and blood and her parents and a kitchen knife stuck in an alien chest and yellow paint bubbling and peeling and skin bubbling and peeling and so much blood._

_It's so dumb, but she can't stop thinking about (blood so much blood) the little bottle of rose perfume on her mother's dresser. Every year her father buys her mother the same perfume for her birthday. Every year he jokes about how this is the year he can't afford it. Every year her mother rolls her eyes and says, "I can live without, darling," and every year he scowls like she's mortally offended him, produces the shoddily-wrapped package, and sings, "But _I _can't, my wiiiild Irish Rose! The sweetest flower that grows!"_

_(It is so embarrassing when her father sings. He sings _all the time_. Blood and fire and bodies in the doorway. He will never sing again. So much screaming. So much screaming.)_

_The world reeks of smoke and death and when she brings her wrist—her sore wrist, her aching wrist—to her nose, she inhales a ghost of rose. _If you listen I'll sing you a sweet little song, of a flower that's now drooped and dead… _She crept into her mother's room before sneaking out. She stole three dabs of rose perfume. One for each wrist. One between her breasts. Brandon was definitely going to see her breasts this time. Three hours ago—only three hours ago—her whole universe revolved around the _absolute necessity _of Brandon Deluca finally getting his hands on her boobs. _

_She glances down. Her shirt is half-unbuttoned. A hickey is starting to darken the pale skin above her right breast. She's probably got another on her neck. She bites her hand again to keep from screaming. The pain doesn't even register anymore. The scent of stolen roses fills her nose. She can't breathe. She can't breathe._

_Later—days later, days that feel like months, like years—she is still sixteen years old, but she feels so much older. She is cold all the time. She sits wedged into the darkest corner she can find, with a book in her lap. Every once in a while she turns a page, though she hasn't read a single word. The dark ink swims before her eyes. She thinks it's poetry. The lines are short. One of the women in Alliance blue gave it to her; someone with red hair a few shades lighter than her own, who has eyes the same dark green as her mother's. "If you look busy, fewer people will bother you," the woman had said quietly, as she pushed the book into her freezing, bandaged hands. _

_She tries to look busy all the time, but people still bother her and her hands won't stop shaking._

_She's washed her wrists a dozen times—two dozen—a hundred—but the memory of roses scrapes and scrapes and scrapes at her with its thorns._

#

"What do you think it means?"

"What?"

"Her eyelids. The look on her face. Is she dreaming?"

"Everybody dreams, dipshit."

"She looks so messed up. Aren't people supposed to look peaceful when they sleep?"

"Would you? If you were her? Now stop asking fucking questions and give her another dose. And strap her hands down. I don't like the way she keeps scratching."

#

_She is eighteen years old._

_Something is meant to happen on her eighteenth birthday. Something important._

_Oh, she knows she's supposed to get ready for the party. Big party. Lots of important assholes she doesn't know and doesn't care to. Her foster 'parents' spare no expense when it comes to showing off, and she is their pet Mindoir survivor; they love showing her off. It's practically their favorite pastime. She wonders how much their son resents it, but even though they're almost the same age, they aren't close enough for her to ask. Or for him to give an honest answer if she did. _

_The party starts at seven. Hours and hours to get ready, as if she'll actually use them for that purpose. Even when she's _trying_, it never takes more than half an hour. A dress hangs from her closet door. It's probably worth more than the entire house on Mindoir, including all the furniture. She doesn't know because she had exactly no hand in picking it out. No doubt it will fit like a glove anyway. That's what money can buy. She hates the dress with the kind of hate that begs her to take it out back and burn it. It's virginal white and looks uncomfortably like a wedding gown, right down to all the beading and rhinestones and embroidery defacing it. If she'd been consulted, she'd have chosen yellow, to remind her of her mother. Or blue, like her dad's eyes and the Mindoir sky she still misses, even though the last time she saw it, it was full of stars and smoke. Something simple. Something real. Something her._

_On the vanity sits a tiny vial of expensive rose perfume, pale gold in a too-familiar cut-crystal bottle. An early birthday gift. She'd nearly dropped it when she opened the package. And then she'd nearly thrown it._

"_Don't worry about the cost," her foster… whatever-she-was had said, obviously misreading the sickened expression. "Nothing's too dear for you. You're practically part of the family!"_

_Practically._

_Like hell._

_For almost two years, she has lived with this family, has eaten dinners at their table and slept in the room they gave her. (The room is also white, with a lace-draped canopy bed and a vanity and a closet full of other clothes she also hates. If she ever meets the decorator they hired to fit out this room, she will personally break their nose.) For almost two years, she has gone to school and brought home excellent grades and not kissed any boys from calculus class. She has not unbuttoned her shirt or put a dab of perfume between her breasts. She answers questions, even when the answers are no one's business but her own. She smiles, but rarely laughs. Laughter is too much like acceptance. She is polite, because her mother raised her to be polite and no matter how much she wants to swear or scream or run away—and she wants to do all these things on a daily basis—she's not going to be a disappointment to her dead mom. It's a code. Something to live by. Something worth living for._

_For almost two years, they have seen her every single day, and somehow none of them knows how much she hates white._

_Somehow none of them knows how much she hates the scent of roses._

_Still, when she lifts the little bottle to her nose, she remembers the feel of her mother's hands gently pulling knots from her hair, and not all the memories are bad ones._

_She remembers that something is meant to happen on her eighteenth birthday._

_She's been planning it for months._

_She's been counting down, marking little red 'x's on her calendar._

_She is eighteen._

_She is—_

_She—_

_Later, something is supposed to change. She just has to remember. She just has to remember what it is._

#

"Who's she talking to?"

"The fuck should I know?"

"I mean, who do you think?"

"You need to _stop_ thinking shit like that and pay attention to the monitors. And where's the damned smell coming from?"

"Numbers are a little off, but she's still under. What smell?"

"Some flowery shit. Can't you smell it?"

"Nah. Never been able to smell right since I broke my nose. Maybe it's her. You know, from the soap or whatever. I mean, they've been washing her hair and stuff, right?"

"Maybe you're—fuck, is she waking up again?"

"You're giving her more? Are you sure—"

"They said keep her under. What the hell d'you think I'm doing?"

"It's just—"

"Shut up, asshole, and pass me that syringe."

#

_She is eighteen years old and she dances until dawn in a white dress. She dances on a rose-scented terrace under stars that echo the splashes of rhinestones across the bodice of her gown. She dances until her feet hurt and she can't breathe. She can't breathe._


	5. The Rattle of the Bones

Garrus woke reaching for the empty side of the bed.

His hand, of course, found only air; the little grey cot in the little grey room wasn't Shepard's cabin with Shepard's large bed or Shepard's Citadel apartment with Shepard's even larger bed. Beds. The shock of finding nothing under his searching hand was enough to bring him instantly upright, instantly awake.

In spite of his throbbing head—drinking with Zaeed was always a bad idea; drinking with Zaeed and Solana in a bar full of people determined to buy him drinks resulted in a hangover of actual hellish proportions—he was up, armored, and choking down yet another of the tasteless dextro ration bars before he could think too hard about the disturbing course his dreams had taken.

A waste of good sleep. That's what he'd told Shepard once. He wasn't going to let bad dreams be a waste of good waking hours, either. Not when he had so much to do.

When he found her, he could stop having nightmares about failing her.

So he rolled his shoulders, tilted his head from side to side until his neck gave a satisfying crack, and checked his omni-tool. True to Hackett's word, evidently, messages were finally getting through; his priority must've been bumped. After so many months of constant worrying, it seemed incredible that he could look down and see his father's name in his inbox arranging a meeting for later in the day. Primarch Victus had sent a similar request. Nothing from Hackett himself, yet. He almost smiled to see a message from Liara—of course Liara would find a way to get back into the system, no matter how limited it was—asking him if he'd come see her when he woke, and to bring Tali if he could find her. He sent a few brief responses, once again tucked Shepard's dog tags into his own armor, and set out with renewed purpose. And lingering headache.

Outside, a faint light seeped through the clouds, so dim and watery Garrus had a hard time thinking of it as sunlight. Still, it wasn't raining. That was something, he supposed. Shepard would've elbowed him—armor be damned—and told him to lighten up."Like the sky," she'd say, one side of her mouth pulled up in the teasing smile she saved for him. "Get it? Lighten? Up? Sunlight? Sky?"

"Yeah, I get it," he said aloud, and one of the loitering Alliance techs shot him a swift, concerned glance before hastening away. "You're not nearly as funny as you think you are."

She'd have laughed at that, he knew.

He walked faster, to keep from thinking about how much he missed that laugh.

Winding his way through the muddy, makeshift streets, Garrus followed the directions Tali had given him. Though he saw evidence of her presence—evidently Chatika was mid-retrofit—she was no longer in her quarters.

Instead of heading immediately to Liara, he approached an Alliance lieutenant whose dark hair was pulled back into a tail similar to the one Shepard wore. Her face was upturned, eyes closed, catching the brief warmth as a sunbeam broke the cloud cover.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant?"

The young woman startled, taking a step back, and looked around swiftly as if to make certain he was speaking to her. A faint flush rose in her cheeks before she fumbled a salute. "Sir?" she replied. "Sir! Can I help you, sir?"

His mandibles flicked at the abundance of sirs, but he only said, "Don't suppose you've seen, uh, Admiral Tali'Zorah vas Normandy?"

"I have, sir!" The woman practically bounced on her toes as she broke into a vast grin. He considered taking a step back of his own. "I believe—I'm almost certain, sir—she was headed to, well. To the graveyard, sir."

He tilted his head. "The graveyard?"

"Some folks call it the hospital, but… well. I've never seen a hospital like that, sir, begging your pardon."

This time the flare of his mandibles was slower, almost a smile. "No need to beg my pardon, Lieutenant. I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh! Sorry, sir! It's a warehouse, sir. It's… it's where they're keeping the geth, sir. The broken ones. All the ones that just… shut down, sir."

He couldn't have said exactly what the lieutenant saw in his expression, but she straightened to stiff attention and saluted again. "Sorry, sir," she said. "That was… thoughtless. After everything. You just head down this street here and take a left. It's near the broken bridge, sir. You can't miss it, sir, but someone will point you in the right direction if you lose your way."

He nodded, but before he could turn away, she shifted uncomfortably and bowed her head. "Sir? Thank you. And… we're all—I'm—_I'm_ sorry, sir. I-I was on Elysium, you know. My family lived there. During the Blitz. She saved my life even before she saved the whole damned galaxy. I joined up because I wanted to be like her." Her dark eyes shone a little. "I can't thank her, but I can thank you, sir."

Garrus nodded again, briskly, but before he'd gone three steps he turned back. The lieutenant was still watching him, and she ducked her head, embarrassed, when his gaze met hers. "Can I ask your name, Lieutenant?"

"Bane," she said. "Eleanor Bane, sir."

"Thank you for your help, Lieutenant Bane. Eleanor. And Shepard… she'd thank you too. She'd have given you hell for the overabundance of courtesies, she'd have been uncomfortable with the air of hero worship, and then she'd have told you you were a credit to the uniform and thanked you for your service. She'd have said something to make you laugh. She was good at that. Then she'd have clapped you on the shoulder and told you she should go, and as you watched her walk off you'd feel like the luckiest person in the whole damned galaxy, just to have had a conversation with her."

Eleanor Bane blinked her wide eyes, and tears fell from the corners to leave shining tracks upon her cheeks. So he laid a hand on her shoulder and said, "You're a credit to the uniform. Thank you for your service. I should go."

Her laugh was barely more than a breath, but it was a laugh. He found a smile for her, small and brief, and when he walked away he heard Shepard's louder, more infectious laugh ringing in his head.

#

Following the lieutenant's directions, he found the warehouse without much difficulty, and though he'd thought himself somewhat prepared by the words _graveyard_ and _hospital_, the reality still took him aback. Tali's purple envirosuit was a bright spot of color in the vast, dim room. Though she was directing a team of other quarian techs, they were dwarfed by the magnitude of still, silent bodies around them, row after row after row.

Tali waved and began weaving her way toward him. "You left your room," she said.

"Ahh, Tali, stating the obvious."

"I don't suppose you're here to help?"

"I would," he said, gazing down at a geth trooper whose askew limbs made him think of a discarded toy. He'd taken out dozens of the little bastards in his day, and yet he felt a strange pang of sorrow to see these ones simply… gone. Empty. Like EDI. Strange how _dead_ and not just _non-functional_ seemed better terminology. "But I need to talk to you, and Liara needs to talk to both of us."

"And they're not going anywhere," Tali added, sighing softly. She passed along a few instructions to her team before falling in at his side. When they stepped out into the fresh air, he thought he caught a momentary glimpse of blue sky. Wonder of wonders.

Tali wasn't looking at the sky. Her shoulders were hunched and she kicked listlessly at a muddy stone at her feet. It went skittering away until it finally landed in a puddle. "I don't understand. They're not damaged. Everything looks right. I can't fix the problem if I don't know where the problem is."

"Like EDI," Garrus said.

"Exactly like EDI." She shook her head. "It doesn't make any sense. Other machines are functional. It's obviously something to do with the Reapers, but… EDI and the geth existed before their programs were modified by Reaper code. We just have to… bring them back online. Right?"

Garrus shrugged. "Oh, for a geth repair manual. Don't suppose your people have those lying around?"

"Very funny." She stumbled, and Garrus reached out, grabbing her arm and keeping her upright before she landed in a puddle of her own. When she regained her balance, her posture remained thoughtful. "But my father's research might… actually be helpful. I'll have to—keelah. I'll have to see if any of that work is applicable here."

While she hypothesized, Garrus watched the people around them and his sister's words came back to haunt him. _People will look to you because they want to look to her, and you're the closest thing they've got._ They _were_ garnering an unusual amount of attention. People stopped what they were doing to look at them. Some simply stared. Others saluted.

Even respectful attention made his plates itch. He didn't know how Shepard did it. Made him want to find a sniper's perch with cover at his six. They were too damned _visible_.

The war might be over, but any soldier who stopped worrying about the possibility of bullets was a step closer to death, in his opinion. Garrus walked a little faster, and when the opportunity came to take a turn off the main road, he took it. The angle of Tali's head said she thought he was crazy, but he was used to that.

_Better safe than sorry_ echoed in his head, and he wasn't sure if it was his thought or something of Shepard's. Either way.

#

Somehow, Liara had managed to find not one but _three_ working monitors, and they were perched precariously on a desk that only looked slightly sturdier than the one in his quarters. All were scrolling information more quickly than he could keep up. Glyph bobbed at Liara's side, looking a little dim, and the drone did not greet them. Insufficient power supply, probably.

"Garrus," Liara said without looking up. "Tali. It's good to see you."

He snorted. "What happened to vacation?"

Her smile reflected, ghostly, on the monitor's screen. "I might ask you the same question." She tapped the leftmost monitor. "Your name has come up more frequently even than I thought it might today, and on extremely encrypted feeds. Admiral Hackett? The primarch?"

Garrus shrugged. "What can I say? I'm popular."

"More than you know," Liara added, devoid of humor. "I have a fraction of my network available, and Admiral Hackett's encryption is better than most, but I'm quite adept at picking up anything to do with the ship. The retrofit order has been stalled, and the _Normandy _has been requested for a reconnaissance mission. Do you… do you know anything about it?"

"How secure are you here?"

At this, Liara finally turned away from her screens, her eyes wide. "Garrus, what—"

"How secure?"

Liara blinked. "This is, I believe, the most secure prefabricated unit in the city of Vancouver. Even the relatively benign closed-circuit feeds nearby have been convinced to look elsewhere in a fifty-foot radius of the building."

Garrus nodded and still ran a cursory sweep for anything she might have missed. Tali, he noted, was running another.

"I would be insulted if you were anyone else," Liara said, arms crossed but smiling faintly. Her brow remained worried.

Garrus shut down his omni-tool, strode to the window, and closed the curtain. "You'd understand if you'd seen the shit the Illusive Man installed."

Tali made a disgusted noise.

"Very well," Liara said. "I will forgive you if you explain."

Garrus took a deep breath and then released it slowly before saying, "There's been a development."

Tali froze. "Keelah! Do you mean—"

"Shepard," Liara whispered. Then, louder, "Are you—Garrus, I haven't seen anything on my feeds. Anything except the huge memorial Admiral Hackett is preparing. Are you certain?"

"Thanks for asking if I'm certain and not if I'm crazy," he said mildly. He drew Shepard's dog tags from their hiding place and let them swing lazily from his hand. Tali's inhale was audible. Liara only stared, but her eyes filled with tears. "Pretty sure the memorial's a front, since Hackett gave me the intel. She's out there. He wants me to find her. I want you to help. Both of you."

"He's giving you the _Normandy_?" Tali asked. "That's the reconnaissance mission?

Garrus inclined his head. "Giving might be an exaggeration. She's being… made available at my request."

"You _demanded_ the _Normandy_?" Liara asked. "Garrus."

"She's Shepard's ship."

"There's a feed I really wish I had been watching. To tell you the truth, I thought the usurpation of the _Normandy_ was going to come as a terrible surprise. I thought I was preparing you for the worst." Liara shook her head. "Instead, this. Of course I will do whatever I can."

"Good," Garrus said, "because you won't like what I want you to do."

Liara sighed. "You want me to stay."

"You must know comms are going to be better here than anywhere."

Her smile was soft and sad. "Just like Shepard. She always did value me more for information than biotics. I understand. I don't _like_ it, but I do understand."

"I'm not staying," Tali said sharply. "So don't ask."

"Wasn't planning on it," Garrus said. "EDI's not going to fix herself."

"And I have a shotgun."

"And you have a shotgun."

Tali placed one hand on a cocked hip. "And you're a bosh'tet who needs to be reminded he's not responsible for everything on his own."

_Shepard elbowed him in his unprotected side. "No, idiot," she said, smirking, "you have to say it like _this_. Vakarian. Garrus Vakarian. All around turian bad-boy and dispenser of justice in an unjust galaxy."_

_"Shepard," he groaned. "That's ridiculous. I am not saying—"_

_"And you kill Reapers on the side."_

_"And I kill Reapers on the side?"_

_She sighed, long-suffering, before pressing a kiss to his scarred mandible. "In the sexy voice, Garrus. In the sexy voice. And it's not a question. It's a statement of fact."_

He blinked, pulling himself from the memory, and bent his head. Tali's posture was still defiantly expectant. His heart pounded. "Fine," he said, his subharmonics ever so slightly uneven. _Definitely not the sexy voice._ Shepard would be appalled. "I'm _occasionally_ a bosh'tet who needs reminding that he's not responsible for everything on his own."

"I'll let you have that occasionally this time," Tali said. "So what do we have?"

"Dog tags," he said. "DNA. And a desperate need for information."

Liara sat again, cracking her knuckles before bringing her fingers to her keyboard. "All right," she said. "Then let's see what we can find."


	6. Clutch and Sink

Leaving Liara and Tali to comb through half-incomplete shipping manifests and broken feeds in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, that might point him in the right direction, Garrus made his way to the turian encampment. Here the stares were less obvious, perhaps, but the salutes were sharper, crisper. A young woman who could hardly be a year out of basic, if that, pointed him in the direction of the primarch's headquarters.

Outside the closed door, Garrus hesitated a moment before knocking.

He couldn't even have said why, exactly. Old ghosts of his father's disappointment. Some dread that, in spite of the appearance of victory, he'd still managed to fail.

_We're in this together._

And then he shook his head and raised his hand, because he'd come too far and lost too much to let doubt sink its damnable talons into him now.

His father looked tired and worn and old, but he smiled as soon as Garrus opened the door. Sitting beside him, Victus, at least a decade younger, looked twice as old, twice as tired, and though he nodded a greeting, he didn't smile.

Damn if Garrus didn't know that feeling.

"Primarch," he said, saluting, and then remaining at attention. "Dad. I'm—it's good to see you both well."

"Well enough," Victus said, and the hum of strain in his subharmonics spoke even more clearly of his exhaustion. Still, his gaze was clear and sharp as he gestured for Garrus to take the seat opposite him. "You look recovered. We heard some dire rumors in the wake of that final push."

Garrus blinked once, and shifted his gaze sideways to his father, who merely gave a slow nod. He hadn't even considered that they might've thought _he_ hadn't made it. "I—they—Shepard got me medical attention in time."

"Heard that too," his father said. "Heard she called for an evac in the middle of a hot zone, with that big bastard Reaper looking on."

"She did."

"Another reason to be grateful to her."

Victus sent Garrus a knowing look, but said nothing. He supposed they were both remembering that last little dark room in London, and goodbyes that tasted irrevocably of endings.

_Forgive the insubordination…_

Garrus inclined his head, not quite trusting himself to speak.

"I'm sorry, son."

"As am I," Victus said, with genuine grief modulating his subvocals. "Perhaps we use the words too often, but it was an honor to serve with her, even briefly, and we owe her a great deal. However—"

Garrus didn't like the sound of that _however_. He definitely didn't like the way Victus' intense gaze turned piercing as it narrowed. "I had a strange message yesterday. Care to explain why an Alliance admiral is sending vaguely-worded demands—polite demands, but demands nonetheless—about one of my own, Vakarian?"

"He's requested my help on a sensitive mission."

Victus leaned forward, elbows propped up on the table, chin resting against his folded hands. He hardly blinked. "You are aware you are not employed by the human Systems Alliance?"

"Sir."

"It made sense—tactical sense—to have you aboard the _Normandy_ when it was on the front lines of a desperate war. You were the Hierarchy's eyes and ears, still answerable to Palaven Command in your role as advisor. I wasn't going to argue with you."

"And now, sir?" Garrus asked. He couldn't help the edge in his voice, but if Victus noticed, he drew no attention to it. Garrus saw his father frown briefly, but the expression didn't linger. He wasn't even sure it was directed at him.

"Even without direct communication with Palaven Command—yet—you and I both know your status has changed within the Hierarchy."

A sick little twist of dismay knotted his stomach. "Sir, I—"

"You have a responsibility to Palaven, Vakarian. To your people."

_I don't think I'm a very good turian, Shepard._

"And I'm… I am aware of it, Primarch."

"Are you?" Victus asked pointedly. "If I was the best they had left on Menae, you can't be more than a couple of steps away from my place. If that. Not after all this." His mandibles twitched into a wry expression. "I'd like to see you better prepared than I was to take it on."

Garrus swallowed hard and was glad he was already sitting. If he'd still been standing he might have walked out. Run, even. "Planning on going somewhere, sir?"

"No more than Fedorian was planning on having his shuttle shot out of the sky. Doesn't change the facts. This is a complicated time. For all of us."

Garrus shrugged and then laid his hands palms-down on the table. "I know—knew—Reapers, sir. And it appears they are no longer a threat. Surely others are better suited to… to a political role."

The sound Victus made was short and sharp and not at all like laughter. "You'll have to save that one for someone else, Vakarian. I didn't want the politics either. I'm not going to buy it."

_Wake up. You're a politician whether you want to be or not._

"You'd be better off listening to the Vakarian sitting next to you, sir. He's the only reason Primarch Fedorian ever listened to me in the first place, and he's…" Garrus sent a faint smile his father's way. "He was the face of C-Sec for a long time for a reason."

Before Victus could speak, his dad said, "It's important? This… sensitive mission?"

"I haven't always seen eye to eye with the admiral," Garrus admitted. "I… if I didn't believe in what he was asking me to do, I'd've told him to throw himself out an airlock."

Victus bowed his head and ran a hand along his fringe. "Are we talking days? Weeks? Months?"

"The less time it takes the better, Primarch," Garrus said. "Though with things the way they are I can't promise a swift resolution to this mission."

Victus sighed. "I understand. Next time… Spirits, Vakarian. No one needs this kind of paperwork. Next time check with your commanding officer before committing yourself to something like this."

He didn't say what they were all thinking. He didn't have to.

#

This time whoever'd broken into his room—and really, he needed to do something about the security if he was going to be here much longer—had announced their presence by leaving the door open a crack. Light shone out, painting a streak of dim gold across the muddy dark. Recognizing Zaeed's laugh from within, he left his gun holstered.

He wasn't sure if he was annoyed at the intrusion, or relieved by it.

_"Make yourself at home," Shepard said, gesturing broadly, and though her lips were smiling he could see nerves in the creases at the corners of her eyes. "My ridiculously oversized quarters are your ridiculously oversized quarters."_

_"Just don't touch the fishtank," he replied, his voice a flanging mimicry of her usual leave-that-cover-on-pain-of-death tone of warning, "and if I lay even the tip of one talon on your model ships you won't be held responsible for your actions, and 'so help me Garrus Vakarian if you leave your towels on the floor or your tools on the table or lose my hamster again—'"_

_"Shut up," she said, but the uneasiness was gone. He still waited for her to make the first move; her mouth on his, her hand clutching the back of his neck, her arms the source of the gentle tug toward the bed._

_He obliged when she gave him a nudge backward, dropping to sit on the edge of the mattress. He let himself rest his hands on her waist as she straddled his thighs, her quick fingers making short work of clasps and seals, but he didn't press, and he didn't take, and he didn't ask. He waited. For things to go right. For things to go wrong._

_And she noticed, of course, because she always noticed. "Don't," she whispered, low and urgent, her gaze unblinking and fixed on his. When he began to duck away, she brought her hands to either side of his face and shook her head. "We're partners. We're in this together or not at all. If that's too—if you don't want to—"_

_"Shut up," he echoed before she could finish, slipping his hands from her waist to trace the curve of her back before pulling her close enough to feel her heartbeat against his chest and the soft warmth of her laugh. Then his were the quick fingers, and his were the straddling thighs, and hers was the head flung back against the sheets with eyes squeezed shut and light, panting breath—_

He was startled out of the memory by a shift in the shadows next to his little prefab unit and a bleep on his visor's screen. A moment later, Alenko stepped into the light, eyes downcast and hands buried deep in the pockets of a plain jacket. It was, Garrus thought, maybe the first time he'd seen Alenko out of Alliance colors. He almost didn't recognize him. If he'd slept at all since they landed back on Earth, there was no evidence of that rest on his drawn face. The skin around his eyes was so dark Garrus had to squint to make sure they weren't actually bruises. His hair was a mess, like it had been rained on repeatedly and left to dry as it wished.

"Garrus," Alenko said, voice gravelly rough. Garrus wasn't sure if it was emotion or exhaustion. Maybe a little of both. "We need to—can we talk?"

After reaching out and pulling the door shut, Garrus crossed his arms and leaned against it, watching. The sounds from within were muffled now, almost unrecognizable. Alenko shifted from one foot to the other, and pushed his hands further into the jacket's pockets.

Finally, Garrus said, "You look like crap."

"I didn't want to leave her."

"You were following orders." Each word was short and steady and devoid of emotion.

Alenko blinked up at him. "You know I was."

Garrus tilted his head ever so slightly in a mild gesture of understanding. Not acceptance. Then he said, "I assume you're here because you've talked to Hackett?"

Alenko shrugged and shook his head all at the same time. Then he swallowed audibly enough for Garrus to hear it standing a foot away. "I'm here because I owe you an apology."

"You were following orders," Garrus repeated. "Not ones I would have followed in your place, but you don't owe me anything."

"Not for that." With a little defiance, Alenko raised his chin and said, "I'm an Alliance officer—"

"No," Garrus interrupted so sharply Alenko's eyes flashed to his, startled enough that the whites showed all around the dark irises. "You're a Council Spectre. If _anyone_ had the authority to defy that order—"

"And if 'defying that order' had destroyed the _Normandy_?"

Garrus tucked his folded arms even closer to his chest to keep from jabbing a finger into Alenko's sternum. "Who on that ship wouldn't have died for her?"

Just for a moment, Alenko looked stung. Then the professional mask came down and he only looked blank. And a little broken. He said, "The apology is for the way I pushed after. For the memorial." He raised one shaking hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "The—you have to remember, after the—after Alchera. All that misinformation. All that bureaucratic shit. And I was _there_. I knew what happened. I saw what became of the _Normandy_; I watched it burn. And then her face—you know, how they used her in recruitment ads. For months. I didn't want to do that again. I didn't want to pretend. That shockwave rocked the entire damned galaxy. We were nowhere nearby and it made us crash. What the hell was I supposed to think?"

Garrus watched him steadily for several long moments. Then he nodded. "The apology still isn't necessary. It was your call to make. You made it."

"You hold it against me."

Garrus' mandibles flexed before pulling tight to his cheeks. He said nothing. He had nothing _to_ say.

"Let me help."

"You have talked to the admiral."

"He says it's your call."

Garrus frowned. "Here's my problem, Alenko. In every way that matters? You've got rank on me. Don't think I don't know it."

_If I was the best they had left on Menae, you can't be more than a couple of steps away from my place._

"I never pulled rank with Shepard."

"Shepard's Shepard. I'm not rebuilding her squad just because it was hers. It won't be an Alliance mission. Alliance chain of command won't matter. Your Spectre status can't matter. I need people I can trust."

Garrus didn't think he was imagining the faint flare of biotic blue, but it was gone in a blink as if it had never been.

"If you think there's _anything _I wouldn't do to help her—"

"Anything except defy a bad order."

Alenko scrubbed his hand through his hair almost violently before jamming it back into his pocket. "Shouldn't that be a selling point? The bad orders will be yours, won't they?"

In his head, Garrus heard Shepard laugh. _He's got you there, big guy._

After a moment, Garrus said, "I'll think about it."

"Garrus—"

"Half an hour ago I wouldn't have considered it."

Slowly, very slowly, Alenko nodded.

Shortly after Alenko walked away into the dark, it began to rain again. Softly. Almost apologetically. For a moment, Garrus stood with his brow pressed to the door, one hand on the handle, letting the rain run down the back of his neck. _Why'd you let him back on the _Normandy_? _he asked Shepard silently. _After Horizon? After everything?_

She didn't answer of course. She wouldn't have, even if she were standing right in front of him.

_I'm not questioning your judgment,_ he thought at her.

She'd have smiled at that. Sadly. And he'd have known that was _exactly_ what he was doing.

He just wouldn't have known if he was right or wrong to do so.

Inside, Zaeed's shout was followed by the sound of breaking glass.

Garrus sighed and pushed open the door. Zaeed and Jack were sitting opposite each other on the floor, cards in hand and a stack of poker chips between them. The broken glass was an empty bottle of something horrible-smelling that had obviously offended someone enough they'd seen fit to shatter it against the wall beside his desk. From the other side of the room.

"Hey, asshole," Jack said by way of greeting. Garrus huffed a little breath of something not-quite-but-almost laughter. She hooked a thumb in Zaeed's direction with one hand and threw another chip on the pile collected between them with the other. "Gramps here says you're planning a fucking party. Turns out my kids are on vacation and I've got some time. Thought I'd crash."

He didn't thank her. She'd only have rejected the overture if he'd tried. Instead, he jerked his chin in the direction of the cards. "Right," he said. "Deal me in. I'll tell you what I know."


	7. Waiting for a Knock

Six hands into a truly cutthroat, impromptu Skyllian Five tournament, Garrus' omni-tool gave an insistent beep. Zaeed and Jack turned identical expressions of surprise his way. Garrus very nearly laughed. Any other time he would have. Human eyebrows. He never tired of human eyebrows. Both endlessly entertaining and endlessly informative, once one knew how to correctly interpret the dozens of variations of lift and twitch and lower.

"Shit," Jack said, rearranging the cards in her hand as though altering their position might somehow pull her out of her losing spiral. "Someone's got connections. Haven't had a message on my 'tool in weeks. Sanders sent a memo on actual paper the other day. Had one of the kids run it over. Like a fucking mailman."

"Be using goddamned carrier pigeons if they don't figure a way to get the buoys back up," Zaeed muttered. "To say nothing of the relays." Zaeed had a good hand; Garrus had human eyebrows to thank for that knowledge, too. Not quite prepared to concede defeat, Garrus merely tucked his cards into a pile and settled them in front of him.

At least until he brought up his omni-tool's interface and all thought of cards promptly vanished. A second ping followed on the heels of the first. Jack eyed the unattended deck like she was thinking about trying to lift an extra card while no one was looking.

For once? He didn't give a damn if she did. She could cheat as much as she wanted. Hell, he'd throw extra on the pile, just to prove how grateful he was. Because the first message was from Liara and said only: _Expect intel from the admiral. It's mine. I thought it might move things along if it went through proper channels. You'll understand. L._

The second message was, of course, from Hackett. It was even briefer than Liara's.

_We need to speak. Immediately._

"Well?" Jack asked.

Garrus pushed his cards away and rose to his feet. "Zaeed's taking this hand; doesn't matter what you just illegally picked up. And I've got to go see Hackett."

One of Jack's eyebrows reached for her hairline, while the other came down. Skeptical. That was the look. With a side of incredulous. And just a bit of irritation. "In the middle of the night?"

"No rest for the wicked," Zaeed said, a touch too gleefully, as Jack showed her hand and he collected his winnings. She scowled at him.

"Looks like we might have a lead that'll get us out of here sooner rather than later," Garrus explained as he clipped a pistol to his hip. "Be ready if you're coming, Jack."

Zaeed snorted. "And I'm bloody chopped liver?"

Garrus had no idea what that was, but the tone said nothing good. "I—hell, Zaeed, I can't pay."

The older man's brows lowered heavily. Dangerously. He looked a little like he was plotting half a dozen ways to kill a turian with minimal fuss. Or maximum pain inflicted. "Who said anything about goddamned credits?"

Garrus' mandibles fluttered in a brief smile. "You. Any time anyone asks you to do so much as look sideways at something that might smack of effort."

Zaeed's eyes narrowed. Jack leaned back and crossed her arms, her gaze tracking back and forth between them. She smiled a faintly bloodthirsty smile. A moment later, Zaeed made a gesture with one hand Garrus knew was considered rude, and followed it with a toothy grin. "Fuck you, Vakarian. You're damned lucky I like you, or they'd be picking pieces of you out of these walls for weeks. Wouldn't take your credits even if you had 'em. I owe her one. Owe you at least half of something. And this goddamned planet's getting me down."

Garrus lingered a moment, hand on the door. "So I'd be doing you a favor, is what you're saying?"

"Don't push your fucking luck, kid."

Garrus shook his head. "That's more like it. Fine. Both of you be ready. And when you leave? Close the damned door behind you."

Not that he cared, particularly. He had a feeling this room would be empty soon.

#

This time, Garrus found Hackett in his own room and not at headquarters. He approved of the admiral's quarters, mostly because they were exactly the same as all the others he'd seen. Small. Grey. Efficient. Ugly. The ubiquitous dress uniform jacket was carefully folded over the back of his chair, and his ever-present hat perched on the desk next to a stack of datapads and a flickering terminal, leaving the man clad only in white t-shirt and dress trousers, hair ruffled the way Shepard's had sometimes looked when it was shorter and she'd been pushing her hands through it over and over. Somehow Hackett still managed to look commanding. Garrus approved of that, too, though he'd never have admitted it.

Hackett nodded a greeting and closed the door as soon as Garrus stepped over the threshold. "I appreciate you coming right away," he said, already headed over to the terminal.

"News?"

"Take a look."

Garrus bent slightly, the better to peer at the small screen. Hackett hit a button and the darkness began to shift slightly. "Vid?"

"Watch."

The light was terrible, and the camera had a crack in the lens straight down the middle. A moment later, the thin, bright beam of a flashlight cut through the dark, sweeping back and forth in a regular pattern. Looking for something, not just wandering.

The beam paused, jerking sharply. A moment later, the camera's view was partially obscured by the bulk of a body. Garrus squinted, pushing his head closer though doing so revealed no additional details. The video was grainy and soundless. He watched for several more moments but nothing changed.

"Sir, what am we looking—"

"Watch!" Hackett snapped, with all the force of a command. Garrus had to resist the instinct to snap to attention. Unblinking, he watched.

The dark shape moved as another beam of light swept into the camera's field of vision, approaching rapidly. Running, Garrus realized. Definitely not marking out patterns and making precise sweeps.

For a second—just a second—the second beam of light illuminated a dangling set of dog tags. The metal glinted, catching the light and throwing it back. Garrus would have sworn he saw the chest beneath that chain lift and fall. He couldn't make out details, couldn't see if it was armor painted in Shepard's familiar pattern, familiar colors, but the dog tags he knew. He was certain. They were the same ones he carried.

And the breath. He was certain of that, too.

He released the one he'd been unconsciously holding. Beside him, Hackett did the same. They shared a glance. Neither of them smiled.

Another black figure moved in front of the camera. And when it left a few minutes later, taking its light with it, the body on the ground was gone.

"Where did this come from?" Garrus asked. "The footage?"

"Citadel feeds. We have a vast quantity of them recovered, though no personnel to spare for sifting through them. This was anonymous intel, but… from a reliable source. It's not the first time I've had a message on that frequency; several leads were sent my way over that channel during wartime."

Garrus inclined his head, but said nothing either to confirm or deny what knowledge he was privy to. "It seems to confirm the story we already believed, but how does it help point us in a direction now?"

"The feed was timestamped. The anonymous source was able to narrow down a list of ships leaving the area—leaving, at a time when most ships were desperate to _arrive_ and to stay within easy reach of Earth. Most of those ships are accounted for. Two or three are not."

"And of those? How many are human?"

Hackett's lips twitched so subtly Garrus couldn't tell if he was holding in a smile or a frown. "Those figures could have been turian. Asari. A little small for krogan and a little bulky for salarian, but not out of the realm of possibility. I assume you have justification for the accusation in that question?"

Garrus lifted one shoulder in a faint shrug and gestured at the now-still vid. It was frozen on a panel of darkness, revealing nothing. "The grid they were using to sweep. I've seen Shepard mark the same pattern countless times when she didn't want to risk missing anything in the dark. C-Sec uses a different pattern. So does the turian military. If they're not Alliance, they had Alliance training."

Though Hackett's eyebrows remained stern, this time the lips definitely turned upward. "Good catch. One human ship. Kowloon class. _MSV Empire_. Had been grounded, unsold, for two years prior to the war, so we must assume it's stolen. We have record of it leaving because it affected traffic; all available ships were attempting to evac Citadel survivors. The _Empire_ nearly caused an accident, and attempts to hail were ignored. It moved out of the way and departed, and the incident was forgotten."

"Until your anonymous source went looking for incidents logged at the same time as this feed?"

"Indeed."

"Damn." Garrus nodded absently, pacing from one side of the room and back again, trying not to long for the vast quantity of information Liara could likely have pulled if all her sources and feeds were up and running. _There's one for that,_ Shepard murmured in his head. _No use crying over spilled milk._ "They have weeks on us."

"We already suspected that."

Garrus swept a hand back over his fringe and shook his head. "If they were on something Kowloon class, they'll need better facilities for medical care."

Hackett nodded, already typing. "Luna's too close. Mars is a good candidate, and probably where I'd start. Perhaps one of the outer colonies. I'll send you what intel I have. The Reapers… the Reapers didn't spare Sol. A lot of possible places are just craters now."

"Like a needle in a haystack," Garrus murmured under his breath. Shepard's voice said, _hey, at least it's a smaller haystack? _Garrus ignored her. "And the _Normandy_?"

"Ready to leave tomorrow. I have a list of returning personnel. I assume you have people you're adding to that list."

"I do."

"Is Alenko on it?"

Garrus stiffened. "He asked. I hadn't decided."

Hackett held his hands wide in a gesture of pacification. "I'm as familiar with his dossier as I am with yours, Vakarian. I understand you don't see eye to eye. I even suspect I understand why. He'll follow orders, though, and he's got Spectre status to fall back on. Use it. If he's aboard, the _Normandy_'s just a ship commandeered by a Spectre on Council business."

Garrus bristled. "And if not, it's been stolen by a hotheaded turian some say has ties to a merc band on Omega?"

"Not quite so dire," Hackett said. "I think we could leave Archangel out of it. But it'll save me having to think up a believable story."

"And the Council?" Garrus asked, unable to keep a waver of bitterness from his subvocals. "They're unwilling to grant me immunity—even temporary Spectre status—to go hunting for one of their own? For her of all people?"

Garrus was not entirely sure _what_ Admiral Hackett's eyebrows were trying to tell him, but an instant later the man's expression went carefully, unnaturally neutral.

"You didn't ask?" Garrus pressed.

"There's no one _to_ ask. Not right now." Before Garrus could question this, or protest, Hackett lowered his voice and explained, "The Council didn't make it off the Citadel when the Reapers took it. It's not public knowledge."

Garrus keened a low note of surprise. "Damn. Who does know?"

"Urdnot Wrex. Primarch Victus. Very few others. We're… on damage control. It goes without saying this is confidential ten times over, Vakarian. We've got people stranded far, far from their homeworlds. We've got a power vacuum the likes of which the galaxy's never known. We're walking a damned razor blade here. Now is not the time to be, as you say, hotheaded."

"I understand, sir."

"So take Alenko. Udina made him a Spectre—put that bastard's meddling to good use. Alenko's presence lends you credibility and the right to secrecy, and in spite of your personal feelings, his history tells me he's a damned fine soldier." Hackett crossed his arms over his chest and gave Garrus an appraising look. "Only an idiot turns down an advantage when its offered. Are you an idiot?"

Garrus couldn't stop his mandibles from flaring in surprise. Hackett responded with a smile. "I didn't think so. The _Normandy_ will leave at evening shift change. Less of an audience. We don't need people making news of this."

Hackett's shoulders hunched for a moment, and his right hand clenched into a loose fist. "We don't know anything about these people, Vakarian. Their motives. Their plans. Instead of turning the Hero of the Citadel—the Hero of the damned Reaper War—over to authorities who might've helped her immediately, they took her. Find them." The admiral lifted his eyes, clear and blue and sharp. Garrus didn't need to decipher Hackett's eyebrows to know he was angry. Ferociously angry. Devastatingly angry. "Bring her home. And if they've done anything to hurt her…"

"You have my word, sir." There, at least, Garrus knew he would need no help, no guidance. He imagined anyone watching for signs on his face, in _his_ expression, wouldn't require expressive human eyebrows to see what his intentions were.

Hackett extended his hand. Garrus accepted it. They shook once, firmly.

If one hair on Shepard's head was harmed, his antics on Omega—Kron Harga, Har Urek, Thralog Mirki'it—would look like mercy killings.

Hackett smiled, small and tight, as though he knew exactly what Garrus was thinking.


	8. A New Start

Some missions wanted attention; some asked for waving flags and hopeful goodbyes and crowds cheering their heroes on. This one was not one of those. This was the kind of run the _Normandy_'d originally been built for—stealthy and swift—except even with the most obvious Alliance markings scraped off under the pretense of retrofit, thanks to the war she was still virtually the most recognizable ship in the galaxy. Next to the _Destiny Ascension_, perhaps.

The last thing they needed was too many eyes turned their way. The less that made it into the vids, the better; _commandeered for a Spectre mission_ would only buy so much time before nosy people started asking nosy questions, and they all knew it. Garrus hoped leaving Liara on damage control would keep their secret a little longer. Long enough. The _Normandy_ might have stealth systems out in the vastness of space, but if the wrong news source leaked the wrong material before they were out there, taking advantage of it, their prey might vanish before they could arrive to do what needed doing.

Garrus oversaw the proceedings from the sidelines, wearing a helmet to hide his too-recognizable features. It wasn't much of a disguise, though at least with his—_Shepard's_—favorite set of armor busted beyond repair, he wasn't wearing the silver and blue set the whole damned galaxy was used to seeing him wear. Not that dark blue and gold, painted with his old Archangel sigil, was subtle, for those who knew what to look for.

At least it didn't have a hole blasted through the collar. Or a flaming Mako's worth of damage.

Throughout the day, the crew boarded in surreptitious teams, two or three at a time, always when the area around the ship was quiet. As quiet as any place could be, on a planet teeming with too many stranded people, surrounded by multiple militaries still jumping at shadows and not quite believing their good luck. This time the _Normandy_ would be staffed by a mere skeleton crew of Alliance personnel no longer wearing Alliance colors. Volunteers, Hackett's list told him. Every one of them. Garrus recognized all their names. Not that he expected anything else from Shepard's people. His people now. They came in the guise of techs and engineers, carrying tools, speaking loudly enough of specs and repairs that anyone overhearing would assume, incorrectly, the _Normandy_ was grounded indefinitely.

For once, Garrus found himself glad of the rain. A steady downpour kept the _Normandy_'s usual crowd of gawkers and bystanders away. The sound of raindrops pattering on the ceramic of his helmet kept him from thinking thoughts of failure. He made a note of Zaeed's arrival, and another when Jack arrived, wearing some kind of oversized hooded garment, with a bag slung over her back. Tali, he knew, was already within, holed up in engineering. With Shepard's hamster.

He didn't want to imagine Shepard's face if he showed up without her pets. He had a feeling _disappointed_ would only be the beginning of it.

Wrex sent Grunt with a note that said, "Talked to Hackett. Take the kid. He's not me, but he'll do."

Anyone but Wrex and Garrus would've said no. His mission. His squad. But he'd never been one to spite an advantage, and he already knew he and Grunt worked well together. When the krogan wasn't waxing poetic about old massacres and the thousand and one ways to kill a turian his imprints had left behind, at least.

"You think you can follow orders?" Garrus asked. "You're not head of Aralakh company on that ship."

Grunt bounced on the balls of his feet and smashed his fists together. "Give me a chance to rip the faces off a deserving enemy and I'll follow your lead, turian. Garrus."

Within his helmet, Garrus' mandibles twitched. "Not quite a yes, but I'll take it. Mostly because you and I both know how pissed she'll be if you go rogue."

Krogan didn't have conveniently expressive eyebrows like humans, but Garrus knew their expressions well enough to recognize Grunt's. What he saw was enough to make him nod and wave absently in the _Normandy_'s direction. "Go on. Figure out a reason you need to get in there. Not a lot of krogan retrofit techs."

Grunt's exasperated, _idiot turian who do you think you're talking to_ expression was much more familiar territory. Turning away, the krogan marched toward the ship and loudly—too loudly, really—said, "Just need to get that thing I forgot the last time I was here."

Garrus sighed.

_Do you suppose he's imagining a shotgun?_ Shepard's voice asked. _Or a toy dinosaur? Because I could go either way._

Garrus shook his head, and thought about laughing. _Shark_, he replied. _To keep him safe in the shower._

_Do krogan feel the same way about swimming as turians?_

_Very. Funny. Shepard._

_I try. I try._

Finally, finally everyone he was expecting was aboard except Alenko. Even though the pretense of Alenko's leadership was a necessary facet of the deception, it made Garrus' plates itch. And he'd thought his team on Omega was disparate. He wondered how Shepard had done it. He wondered how he could possibly attempt to—even temporarily—take her place.

_Figure out who to praise and who to head-butt and you'll do fine, big guy._

He scowled, waiting for Alenko.

The rain eased up long enough for the glow of a sunset to redden the horizon, and he heard the newcomer's approach before he saw who it was. When he glanced down, only the faint blur he recognized as a tactical cloak and the confused readout of his visor told him he wasn't alone.

"You did not outfit your wheelchair with a cloak," he said aloud. A moment later the ripple on the edge of his vision vanished, replaced by his sister.

"Funny thing that," she said. "Turns out people are genuinely disturbed by an apparently empty chair moving around on its own. It was either mod the chair or—"

"Stop sneaking around?"

Her mandibles fluttered as she breathed a laugh. "We both know that's never going to happen. How else would I hear all the things no one wants me to hear?"

"How indeed," Garrus mused. "Is that why you're here? Reconnaissance? I know how you feel about goodbyes."

She lifted her shoulders in the barest of shrugs. "Yeah, well, after the last time I wasn't really going to take my chances."

"I think last time was about as extreme as these things get, Sol. You know, with the imminent invasion of giant sentient machines and everything."

Another slight lift and fall of her shoulders. "Doesn't take an apocalypse, G. Just a bullet. I thought I'd never see you again. And I didn't like it. So I've decided to temporarily lift my ban on goodbyes. Just this once."

He dropped a hand to her shoulder and gave it a squeeze before bending to press his brow swiftly to hers. She closed her eyes and turned her face away. "I wish I could do more. Wish I could help."

He didn't think. Didn't second-guess himself. He opened his mouth and the words, "So come," fell out, followed by a resounding silence. In the distance, he heard Alenko's voice raised in argument. With Hackett, Garrus knew, though they weren't near enough for the admiral's side of things to be heard.

Solana frowned, waving at her crippled leg. He retaliated by waving at his scarred face.

"Look," Garrus said, dropping to crouch, his gaze unwaveringly on hers, "Doctor Chakwas knows what she's doing. She's been putting me back together for years. Let her take a look. She's probably a damned sight better than whatever field medics have been poking at you."

Solana stiffened and her mandibles flared, but she didn't look away. "I'm not a charity case."

"Who said you were? Look, the short version is whatever Shepard did fried the ship's AI. I think maybe she can be brought back online. And you're one of the best tech specialists I know. It's not charity. I'd put you to work."

Shock flitted across Solana's features, and he didn't think it was because of the compliment. "You mean VI, surely."

"I mean AI. Her name's EDI." Garrus paused, struggling to find the right words, a little startled by the waver of emotion in his subharmonics. "She's… she's helped me out a few times. Hell, you tell her I said this and I'll deny it, but she's a friend. I'm not ready to give up on her."

"…An artificially intelligent friend?" She smirked. "I always doubted your people skills, but this is something else."

"Funny," he drawled. "Keep going and I'll leave you in this rainy hell of a city. See if I won't."

"Fine," she said, raising her hands in surrender. "You're the boss. I get it. But… modifying a visor or designing a new sniper scope is a far cry from fixing a broken AI, G."

"You can't do it?"

Her mandibles flicked. Not quite a smile—they were none of them much in the mood for smiling—but closer to it than he'd witnessed since he last saw her on Palaven. "You challenging me?"

He shrugged. "I mean, if it's beyond your capabilities…"

"Since when does that work?"

"Since when doesn't it?"

She snorted, but he knew he had her. He could already see the wheels turning, and if there was _one thing_ he knew about his sister, it was that she was relentless when she had a problem to mull over.

"Besides," he added, "even if EDI's beyond repair? Who better to illegally mod our gear? Spirits only know what we're headed out to face, Solana, and I think my leisure hours are about to take a drastic cut."

The cant of her head was faintly disgusted. "Honestly, G? You spend your leisure hours modding shit?"

"Ha," he replied. "You don't?"

The little peal of laughter was short and bright and completely out of place in the dim twilight and incessant rain. He loved her for it. It was, however, over too soon, replaced by concern. And reluctance.

"But Garrus—"

"Come," he repeated. It wasn't quite a plea, but it was close enough. "We can always get a message to Dad." He jerked his head in the direction of the _Normandy_'s bulk. "These are good people, but they're Shepard's people. It'd be nice to have one of my own."

As Alenko and Hackett drew nearer, he heard the admiral say, "Major Alenko, this is—"

"_Spectre_ Alenko," came the impatient interruption. Garrus had to hand it to Alenko: he sounded curt and dismissive and exactly the opposite of his usual self.

"Spectre Alenko," Hackett amended. "This is highly irregular. The _Normandy_'s seen heavy action and—"

"And she's the ship I need."

"For?"

Alenko sighed. "Council business. Confidential Council business. Forgive me, Admiral, but I can't say more."

"Very well, Spectre, but I must go on record as opposed to this."

"Noted, Admiral," Alenko said.

"You sure he's not the one in charge?" Solana asked.

"Funny," Garrus said again. "It's all part of the plan."

"And you're sure? About…"

More than anything else, the note of loss, of helplessness in her voice assured him he was making the right choice.

"Solana. You've got five minutes to wheel your invisible ass to that ship."

She saluted, and before he could protest the gesture, she was safely under her cloak. Her chair left tracks in the mud. Luckily no one was around to notice.

While Alenko and Hackett continued to discuss the details of the _Normandy_'s conscription, Garrus made his way to the ship. He stood inside the door until Alenko strode in. As soon as they were alone, Alenko's sharp Spectre persona fell away and he, too, saluted. "Sir," he said. "I'm grateful for the opportunity."

Garrus nodded. As Alenko turned away, however, he said, "Alenko? Kaidan. You were good out there. Didn't know you had it in you."

Kaidan's lips turned up ever so faintly. "Shepard was a good teacher."

"Yell loud enough and eventually someone will come over to see what all the fuss is about?"

Kaidan nodded. "With a side of: assume people will say no and don't let them get a word in edgewise until you've already gotten your way."

Garrus echoed Kaidan's smile. "She does do that."

He heard Kaidan inhale and hold his breath a moment too long before he said, "Thanks, Garrus. I… know you don't want me here. I won't let you down."

On another salute, Kaidan strode away and Garrus turned toward the cockpit. Joker was, of course, already waiting, hands hovering over the navigation interface. His shoulders were still hunched under a burden of grief, and even without subvocals to betray it, Garrus could hear the sadness when Joker attempted to quip, "Guess if you're the new boss I'm gonna have to lay off the stick-up-your-ass commentary, huh?"

"Not on my account," Garrus remarked mildly. "Wouldn't be the same without it."

Ten seconds passed. Twenty. The silence was heavy. Finally, Joker said, "We're going to find her, right?"

"We're going to find her."

"Good," Joker said. "Because I'm going to be such an ass when you're _not_ the boss anymore."

"I look forward to it," Garrus said. And, to his own surprise, meant it. "Take us out of here, Joker."

"Aye, sir," Joker said, as the _Normandy_ stirred to life all around them.


	9. Feeding a Little Life

Standing in the cockpit as the _Normandy_ broke Earth's atmosphere, Shepard's loss had never seemed more stark.

Garrus was many things. Focused, yes. Driven, under the right circumstances. Loyal, when it was earned.

But he wasn't her.

_Second to none at beating yourself up, though_.

He wasn't even sure if it was his own thought, or something Shepard might have said.

With the space around Earth so crowded with ships, Garrus watched as Joker wove in and out of traffic. When the wreckage of the Citadel appeared suddenly, surrounded by its cloud of ships on desperate rescue missions, he fought the urge to slam his fist onto the button that would've shuttered the windows.

_It's mostly a lot of running and shooting and usually somewhere in there a button needs pushing, but Shepard always hogs that part._

"You gonna loom there all day, boss?" Joker asked, his gaze fixed on the instruments in front of him. "Not that I don't appreciate an audience, but…"

"You think they'll rebuild it?"

One shoulder lifted in a slight shrug. "Up to me? I'd go with something new. Say goodbye to the giant, space-station-shaped Reaper trap people have been coming back to cycle after cycle after cycle. But who knows. Maybe those creepy Keeper things are already in there, sprucing things up, pasting bulkheads back in their places, planting flowers on the Presidium and scuttling over the countless dead—" The pilot shuddered, and if the ship veered a little too sharply and a little too quickly to the right, Garrus wasn't going to mention it. "Shit. Even if she got rid of the threat for good, why court disaster?"

"Getting cynical in your old age, Joker?"

Joker snorted. "Right. _Getting._ You know what else I'm getting? Observant. Which is how I know you're up here stalling. You afraid of the big bad crew?"

_I'm not Shepard._

Almost conversationally, Joker continued, "Not that you have to be as obsessive about it as she was—is—but you can't go wrong touching base with them. You have time before we hit Mars."

"Shepard and her rounds."

"You're on the right track," Joker said, directing the _Normandy_ past a wounded turian dreadnought—they weren't close enough for Garrus to determine which one—and out toward the endlessness of the stars. "She always starts with me. I'm her favorite, you know."

"Right."

"It's all downhill from there, really. Through the CIC and up to her cabin, because she likes her pets only slightly less than she likes me and ED—me." Joker swallowed hard enough for Garrus to hear it, and on his visor, the pilot's heart rate increased slightly. When Joker spoke again, however, his voice remained calm, measured, slightly mocking, just like always. "Then it's down to the hold, through Engineering, and finally onto the Crew Deck."

"_Very_ observant," Garrus remarked wryly. "Next you'll be telling me what she had for breakfast and the color of her socks."

"Oh, I _could_," Joker mused. "But mostly because I refuse to believe she owns socks any color but black, and she evidently missed that whole 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' lecture they're so fond of in grade school."

_Given a never-ending supply, she'd eat hot, buttered toast until she burst,_ Garrus thought. _And most of her socks are every color of the spectrum _except_ black._

Aloud, he said nothing.

Oblivious, Joker lowered his voice mock-conspiratorially, adding a stage-whisper, "Between you and me, I'm pretty sure she doesn't like you much. I mean, she _always_ saves you for last."

Garrus' mandibles twitched. "I thought you were going to save the smart-ass remarks for when I wasn't the boss anymore."

On a sigh, Joker said, "Old habits die hard."

Garrus chuckled, a single weak _ha_.

"I'll tell you one thing, though," Joker said, turning his head just enough to raise his eyebrows pointedly, "she never hovers in the cockpit. Ever."

A second _ha_ followed the first, and Garrus inclined his head. "Fine, Joker. You win."

Joker's eyebrows shot even higher, and he let out a little whoop. "Did you get that EDI? I wi—"

The pilot's hands shook as they reached for the console, and Garrus backed away before Joker realized he'd witnessed the suddenly pale cheeks and the tears in his eyes.

The CIC was quiet. Sometimes Garrus found himself missing the bright lights of the Cerberus era. Less room for shadow. Here, now, he kept looking around, expecting to see the familiar faces in their familiar Alliance blue. A few people in civilian clothes paused their work and saluted as he passed. He greeted each by name, though he wasn't as good as Shepard at remembering the host of tiny details that set them apart from one another. Shepard would have known if Hastings was the one who always made the good coffee in the mess, or if she was the one who knitted wooly hats in her spare time. Garrus couldn't remember, so he only nodded and moved on.

Traynor's post was empty; he didn't look too long at either the CIC platform or Shepard's terminal. He wondered if it'd been wiped yet. Wondered if it hadn't.

In the elevator, he did not head immediately for Shepard's—his now, he supposed—cabin. Instead, he went to the hold, and was surprised when, instead of finding it empty as he half-expected, he found Cortez fussing over their remaining Kodiak. The pilot was engrossed enough that Garrus was less than a couple of feet away before he turned. "Sir," Cortez said, lips turning up in the briefest of smiles as he let the light of his omni-tool dim.

"I… admit I wasn't expecting you to be here. You weren't on my manifest."

The smile widened enough to bring faint crinkles to the corners of Cortez's eyes. "Oh, I'm _not_ here," he said. "I'm on leave. Somewhere else."

Garrus leaned back against the bulkhead and crossed his arms, and Cortez lifted his hands in a little helpless gesture. "The Admiral was concerned that anyone looking at a manifest—because they're mostly public, you know—would see too many familiar names and start putting pieces together. The ground team—sure, some people might know Jack and Grunt and Zaeed once served with Shepard, but it wasn't _recent_. If it was the same crew who just came back after a month stranded? The Admiral thought it might look fishy to prying eyes."

"And there are always prying eyes."

Cortez nodded solemnly. "So a few stayed back." He hooked a thumb toward Vega's station. "Especially the Alliance folks. I miss that big idiot already. Engineer Adams stayed publicly Earthside. Daniels and Donnelly, like me, cashed in some of that leave they had saved up."

Garrus' mandibles flicked into a little frown. "It's a shame Traynor couldn't—"

Cortez's wink froze Garrus' words mid-sentence. "Oh, Sam's on leave, too. Elbows deep in the EDI problem."

"Some vacation."

Some of the mirth slid from Cortez's face. "Wouldn't be anywhere else, sir."

From the hold, Garrus followed Shepard's usual path, heading to Engineering.

Where, as soon as he stepped off the elevator, he heard someone shouting. Bellowing, really.

Garrus took a deep breath and jogged down the corridor to stop Grunt from killing someone.

The krogan had an audience. Jack stood against the far wall, arms crossed over her chest, head tilted. Garrus couldn't quite read her expression. Zaaed, beside her, was an easier study. When Garrus strode through the open door, Zaeed turned toward him and grinned. "My money's on the goddamned Prothean."

Garrus' groan was lost to Grunt's renewed shouting.

"—This is my room! I don't know what all these _puddles_ are doing in here, but—"

"Enough, krogan. This space is no longer yours. I have only just managed to make it my own. Even the memory of your time here is faded—"

Grunt smashed his fists together. Javik's hands began to glow ever so faintly.

Garrus wanted to knock both their heads together, but wasn't certain it would have much effect on either.

"Javik," Garrus snapped, with all the sharp precision his years in the military had given him. "Stand down."

"Yeah," Grunt said. "I knew you'd see things my way—"

With Grunt, Garrus used his most scathing Bad Cop tone. "You're as bad as he is. Half an hour out of orbit and you're already picking fights? I should send you both to the damned brig."

"Does the _Normandy_ have a brig?" Jack asked, just loudly enough for everyone to hear.

"Probably use that stinking hole you call a room, sweetheart."

"Call me sweetheart again and they'll never find your body, old man," Jack replied. Not sweetly.

_Spirits_, Garrus thought. _I'm going to throw them _all_ out the airlock._

Pointing at the snickering audience, Garrus said, "You two. Out. Show's over." Jack's shoulders stiffened, and for a moment he thought she was going to protest. Instead, she merely stalked out. Zaeed lingered a moment longer before flipping his hand up in a dismissive gesture and muttering, "I mean it. Fifty on the one with all the eyes."

"Funny," Garrus said.

When Zaeed was gone, he turned back to the original problem. "Grunt," he said, "the hold downstairs is better. More room. Vega left some equipment you can use. Try not to break the damned Kodiak."

"I don't see why I should—"

"Did we or did we not discuss your willingness to follow orders?"

Grunt glowered.

_Figure out who to praise and who to head-butt and you'll do fine, big guy._

_Damn,_ he thought. _Please let this not be a head-butt._

He let a hint—just a hint—of Good Cop Garrus seep in. "Remember who's paying you in faces to rip off."

Grunt's glower deepened.

"Hey, if it makes you feel better? The guns are down there. Cortez might even let you play with the stock of shotguns if you ask. Nicely. Shepard's picked up some nice ones. Even some fancy Spectre Requisitions model, even though she never touched the thing."

The glower shifted into a grin. "A Spectre shotgun?"

"Just sitting down there. Untouched."

"Heh. I like that."

_Thought you might._

When the door closed behind Grunt, Garrus turned to Javik. The Prothean was already back at his water-table, obsessively washing and rewashing his hands. Without looking at Garrus, he said, "The krogan is a loose cannon. I would—"

"I know what you'd do," Garrus muttered. "But no one's going out the airlock and the way I see it, you got what you wanted. You're still in this room, aren't you? A little gratitude never killed anyone."

"That is not true," Javik began, with that horrible tone that Garrus knew preceded an _in my cycle_ story. "In—"

"No," Garrus said, snapping the word like a whip. Javik half-turned toward him, blinking, and it was as close to discomposed as he'd ever seen the Prothean. Made him feel a little like he deserved a medal. "How about you tell me what you're doing here?"

Javik's posture shifted just enough to indicate affront. _When isn't he affronted?_ "The asari told me."

"Liara sent you?"

"Sent," Javik scoffed. "I am not commanded by a mere asari."

"Of course not," Garrus said, subharmonics thrumming with sarcasm. With a hefty dose of frustration. "Maybe you could give me a clue about your intentions, though? You're not the only one who can work an airlock, Javik."

"You are attempting to be amusing. I do not like it. It shows weakness."

Garrus' mandibles flicked tight to his cheeks. "You misunderstand me. I'm attempting not to lose my temper. This—this mission. It's important. I can't have anyone here I don't trust. Or who won't work for me."

"For." It wasn't a question, but the single syllable still dripped with derision.

"My mission. My ship. My crew. No margin for error. No room for petty squabbles. _For_."

Javik turned all the way to face him at this, watching him carefully for several breaths, his eyes unblinking. Then, very slowly, very deliberately, he dipped his head a fraction of an inch. "I approve, turian. I will… help."

Never, Garrus thought, had the word _help _sounded less positive. But it was the right word, and it was what he needed, and whatever his reasons, Javik had come without begging, without asking. Because Liara had told him what they planned. And though the Prothean was an enigma, he'd seemed as… attached to Shepard as he was to _anything_ other than revenge, and perhaps that counted for more than Javik would ever admit.

In a galaxy suddenly bereft of Reapers, perhaps it counted for everything.

Shepard would have known what to say. Garrus didn't. A handshake seemed the wrong gesture, and he knew Javik would never approve of a hand to the shoulder or a companionable nudge. Instead, he nodded. "Try not to antagonize the crew," Garrus said.

"They are different, these ones. Angrier."

"Yeah, well, it's Shepard," Garrus said. "It's personal."

"Yes," Javik replied. "Of this, too, I approve. I will prepare, turian, and be ready when I am needed."

"Great."

"Yes," Javik repeated.

The _go_ was loud and clear, but Garrus lingered a moment just to reassure himself he wasn't _actually_ being dismissed.

Garrus took a deep breath before stepping into Engineering, hoping he wouldn't find Tali, Daniels, and Donnelly in some kind of engineer death match.

Though at this point, he was pretty sure nothing could surprise him.

In his head, Shepard snickered. _Oh, Garrus. We have one for that, too. It goes a little like 'don't tempt fate' with a side of 'now you're asking for it.'_

At least, he thought as the door opened, no one was screaming.


	10. Stirring the Pattern

Much to Garrus' relief, nothing in Engineering looked particularly amiss. Daniels and Donnelly huddled, whispering, in the corner, and except for the genuine look of dismay on Daniels' face, that was normal. Tali wasn't at her usual station, and Garrus found he missed Adams' sturdy, reassuring presence immediately. Daniels noticed him first, pushing at Donnelly's shoulder until the man turned and faced him.

"Are they done—" Daniels swallowed and shook her head, regaining her composure. She remained a little wild about the eyes and her voice was strained when she asked, "Is everything all right, sir?"

"Next time something like that happens, get me down here immediately," he said, not without sympathy. "Though hopefully that'll be the one and only incident."

Daniels' shoulders settled and Donnelly lifted his chin. Both of them had the air of people whose death sentence had been commuted at the last moment.

"Have you seen Tali?" Garrus asked.

Donnelly nodded. "Went up to return Shepa—the hamster. Then she was going to swing by the AI core." He sent a slantwise glance down at his boards and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "Should be back any minute, but otherwise—"

"I'll find her," Garrus said. "Thanks." He took a few steps toward the exit and paused. When he turned, he found both of the engineers gazing back at him with solemn expressions and sad eyebrows. "It's all right to say her name. Until we have proof otherwise, this is a rescue mission, understood?"

Daniels nodded first, and the entire landscape of her face changed when she smiled. Donnelly glanced at her, and though his smile wasn't as wide, at least something of the despair was chased away.

"I'd like regular reports," Garrus said. "We all know the _Normandy_'s not running at optimal levels right now, and hopefully nothing we ask of her will push her to her limit, but I want you two monitoring things closely. Last thing we need is to end up on another jungle planet with no warning."

"We're on it, sir," Daniels said. "Come on, Ken. Don't just stand there."

"Hey. We were _both_ just—"

Businesslike, Daniels turned back to her station. "That array isn't going to calibrate itself."

As the door swished shut behind him, Garrus heard Donnelly mutter, "And maybe without _someone_ hovering constantly in the main battery screwing with things, we'll be able to keep the power grid stable."

"I think he heard you, Ken."

"He did not—"

Garrus paused on the other side of the door, smiling a little. The smile faded when he thought about going to talk to Jack, or heading down the hall to see if Zaeed had settled in, so he went for the elevator instead.

Not, he found, that the Crew Deck was a great deal better. His heart stammered when the doors opened and the first thing he saw was the memorial wall. The space where they'd wanted him to put Shepard's name was still empty, thank the Spirits, though he couldn't stop himself from reaching up and touching the pads of his fingers to the cool metal. He took one steadying breath, then two, and let his hand drop back down to his side.

_Now_ was not _then._ So he stepped away from the memorial wall and turned down the hall. It was too quiet, of course. He wanted to smell food cooking in the mess; wanted to see uniformed crew going about their business; wanted to hear laughter and friendly conversation. Instead, he heard only the low thrum of the ship, only noticeable because no other sound rose to cover it. The port lounge was empty. He lingered for a moment outside of Life Support, wondering if that same old mug still sat on that same old table, and then turned to the starboard observation lounge. Kaidan sat on one of the sofas with a cup of coffee at his elbow and a stack of datapads balanced on his lap.

"Sir," Kaidan said, glancing up only briefly. A heavy line furrowed his brow.

Garrus gestured toward the datapads. "The Mars intel Hackett sent over?"

Kaidan nodded, but the crease between his brows only deepened. "Mmm. Three and a half million people require more than a few hospitals and med centers, but most are satellites of the major complex in Lowell City. That's probably the best place to start. 'Course, could be we find nothing but a smoking crater. Comms went down early there." He lifted the datapad and shrugged. "Most of these numbers are pre-war."

"Make a list of everything within shuttle distance of the Lowell City complex. Won't hurt to be prepared."

"Of course." Kaidan closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Garrus was aware of the slight elevation in the other man's heart rate, but said nothing. "Sir, I'd like to request—"

Before he could finish, Garrus said, "I was thinking you might lead one of the ground teams, Alenko."

Kaidan blinked twice, rapidly, but betrayed no other outward sign of his surprise.

"We don't have time to do this one three-person team at a time. No one's sitting up here waiting. Not this time. I'll take point with Jack and Zaeed. Send Tali one way with Grunt, and you the other with Javik. They're both heavy hitters and should allow you two to scan areas as completely as possible."

Kaidan nodded again, and though the lines etched into his brow didn't completely smooth out, he certainly looked less troubled. "Understood. Are we anticipating resistance?"

Garrus shrugged. "We're anticipating the worst because the reality is we know next to nothing. The Reaper forces appear to have been destroyed down to the last husk, so I don't think we're expecting banshees to come shrieking out of nowhere, but we have to assume the people who took Shepard aren't going to want to give her up easily. I don't want to _assume_ it's Cerberus, but… hell. We've got nothing."

Sighing, Kaidan leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, staring out at the stars. "I've never liked running blind."

_That's the thing about getting old Shepard, the platitudes get just as old. Pretty soon blind hope is all we'll have left, and I hate being blind._

_And what, tell me _whatis this_ but the blindest of blind hope?_

"You won't hear an argument from me on that score," Garrus said. Whatever Kaidan heard in his voice—in his subharmonics, maybe—made him turn, tilting his head in silent question. "Every one of us has a history of leadership in some capacity. I trust we can go in smart even if we have to go in blind."

Kaidan gave a low chuckle. "You ever hear the phrase 'too many cooks in the kitchen'?" When Garrus shook his head, Kaidan explained, "Means I don't envy you the task of getting so many people who've had the opportunity to run things their own way to fall in line and play nice."

Garrus' mandibles flicked. "You think it's going to be a problem?"

"Honestly? I think it's just another arena where you don't want to go in blind."

Running a hand over his fringe, Garrus sighed. "You're not wrong, Alenko. Thanks. For the insight."

He was almost at the door when Kaidan added, "For what it's worth, Garrus? Handle things right and I think they will follow you. _We_ will. And not just because of her."

By the time Garrus glanced back, Kaidan had already lifted his coffee mug and was taking a deep drink, tapping at the datapad with his free hand. "Noted," Garrus said, trying to keep his voice neutral. "Send me that list when you're finished with it."

"Aye, sir."

Garrus nearly skipped Liara's office altogether, but when he drew near the door, his visor alerted him to life signs within. When he pressed the panel, the door slid wide to reveal his sister and Tali, decidedly not speaking to one another. The silence was icy, and so loud it made his head ache. Solana sat in front of one of Liara's smaller terminals, while Tali hovered at her back.

"So," Tali said pointedly, "you have a sister."

Garrus sent a brief look his sister's way, but though Solana had turned to look at him when the door opened, her expression was inscrutable, and it was much harder to read her body language with her confined to her chair. Tali was not much easier to read, though he didn't think the lifted head and hands planted on her hips were precisely _positive_.

"And here she is," Tali continued. "On the _Normandy._"

"Solana, Tali. Tali, Solana?" Garrus offered.

Tali cocked one hip, taking her posture in a decidedly unimpressed direction. Solana didn't so much as twitch. "Garrus, she doesn't know anything _about_ the _Normandy_. She's—"

"Sitting right here, and perfectly capable of speaking for herself," Solana retorted sharply. "If you would let me."

Definitely unhappy then. Perfect. Even better than pissed off krogan, really.

"The _last thing_ I need is an amateur poking around," Tali said, ignoring Solana completely. "The ship's still limping—"

"Excuse me?" Solana snapped, twisting her chair around sharply. Tali didn't physically take a step backward, but the little twitch of her helmet spoke volumes. Unpleasant volumes. "You don't know the first thing about me, and you've barely let me get a word in edgewise to explain. I'm certainly not here to mess with your ship or—"

"Then why are you searching the ship's logs for information about EDI?"

Solana's mandibles gave the kind of irritated flare Garrus knew to be justifiably afraid of. "Why don't you _ask_ instead of reading over my shoulder and making unimpressed noises?"

"Tali," Garrus said, "she's not here _because_ she's my sister. She's here because she's damned good with tech, and—"

"And as the _Normandy_'s Chief Engineer I still don't want her touching things she doesn't understand."

"Things I don't understand," Solana said, each word sharp and clipped. "Things _I_ don't understand? You think I don't understand how this ship works, quarian? You think every turian who had a hand in the original _Normandy_'s design was an aging old soldier? Go on. Ask me about the mechanics of the _Normandy_'s stealth system. Please."

At this, Tali did take a step backward, and her hands finally dropped from her hips. "You worked on the SR1 design?"

Solana lifted her chin, a little defiant, a little proud. "I've always been very good at hiding things."

Tali tilted her head at Garrus.

"She's always been very good at hiding things," Garrus admitted. "She's responsible for Shepard's tactical cloak upgrade." He sent a querying look at Solana. "Didn't know you worked on the SR1 project, though."

"Yeah, well, I didn't know you were running around the galaxy with a human Spectre, or off shooting up mercenaries on Omega. We don't tell each other everything. One of my teachers—you remember Anniax Vatrus?—was on the project. Called me for a consult. I worked with him for months ironing out kinks in the damned IES." She grimaced. "Obviously it was all classified, but that's where the job offer came from. You know, that I turned down when I—"

"Went home to look after Mom," Garrus finished. "Damn, Sol."

"Damn is right." She turned and flared her mandibles again, slightly less dangerously. "So while I appreciate how much you care about your ship? I'm sure as hell _not_ coming into this blind."

Not for the first time, Garrus wondered what was happening behind Tali's mask. When she spoke, however, the earlier irritation—though not completely gone—was under control. "I… shouldn't have assumed. I'm sorry."

Garrus half-expected some snide retort, but his sister only inclined her head and said, "Hell, no one likes strangers putting their hands all over their things, I get it. I want to help." He didn't miss the way Solana's gaze dropped and slid swiftly over her amputated leg. "I want to be useful. I… I apologize, too. I should've introduced myself before—"

"Hacking my heavily encrypted systems and setting off a dozen alarms?"

Garrus glared at her. "Solana."

She shrugged _almost_ apologetically. "Come on! Look at this _setup_. I couldn't help myself."

Tali let out a brief chuckle that seemed to take even her aback. "It's a good thing Liara's not here."

"True," Garrus said. "If you think _Tali's_ possessive of her things…"

Solana held her hands aloft in surrender. "Best behavior from here on out."

With a note of reluctance, Tali said, "If you're _that_ good—"

"I am."

Sighing a long-suffering sigh, Tali shook her head and said, "I certainly don't doubt she's related to you. _If_ you're that good, you can help Sam. Samantha Traynor. She's the comm specialist, but she also knows almost as much as there is to know about EDI."

"Except how to bring her back online?"

Garrus wondered how well his sister understood quarian body language, because he knew for _damn sure_ Tali was inching steadily back to the kind of unimpressed that usually involved shotguns. "Unfortunately. We know EDI made backups of her backups, but she… the ways she could alter her own programming are almost impossible to understand. Trying to make sense of it is like navigating without any of your senses working."

"I want to help," Solana repeated.

Tali waved in the general direction of the medbay. "You'll find Sam in the AI core."

"Stop and talk to the doctor on your way through," Garrus said. "That's an order."

Solana made a bit of a face, but left without complaining. When she was gone, Tali leveled a punch at Garrus' arm. "Bosh'tet! You couldn't have warned me?"

"Last minute decision."

"I thought she was a stowaway!"

"The markings didn't give it away?" He smirked. "Or are you… Tali! Tell me you're not saying all turians look the same to you?"

She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat and flung up her hands in a dismissive gesture. "Keelah! Save me from turians who think they're funny."

"No such luck."

She groaned. "I'm going back to Engineering now. Please don't bother me there until I forget how annoying you are."

"That's no way to talk to your commanding officer, Tali'Zorah."

She didn't say anything. She only reached out and squeezed his hand quickly before leaving. Liara's darkened bank of screens gazed down at him reproachfully.

"Fine," he said. "I'm going."

The ride up to Shepard's—his, now; _his_—cabin had never seemed so long. Once he reached the top floor he lingered outside the door until he imagined EDI admonishing him the same way she'd done all those months ago when, hands shaking and heart racing, he'd stood in the very same spot wearing civvies and carrying a terrible bottle of wine.

_Officer Vakarian, the door will not open if you do not depress the panel. May I suggest using your hand?_

"Come on, EDI," he said aloud. "Give me your worst joke. I promise I'll laugh."

He counted the silence for ten seconds, then twenty. After a minute, he slapped his palm on the door and strode into the room beyond. The fish swam their lazy circles. The hamster came scurrying out of his little house, squeaked, and ran inside again. He couldn't place exactly why he felt so unsettled until he realized it was because no music was playing. For practically the first time in his experience. Without thinking, he strode across the room and flicked the music on. It was the same horrible shit Shepard always listened to, and he knew he could have changed it to Expel 10 or the _Fleet and Flotilla_ soundtrack without trouble, but he didn't.

Slowly, feeling every one of his years with at least an extra decade thrown on for good measure, Garrus skirted the bed and sank down onto the sofa. Shepard's wine glasses were gone. Of all the damned things. He stared at the empty spot on the table until his burning eyes needed to blink.

"Joker," he said, "raise me when we're half an hour out."

"Aye, boss," came the slightly tinny reply.

Garrus leaned back, closing his eyes, and pretended he could still smell Shepard's scent even though he knew, he knew he couldn't.

_Author's Really Brief Note: To Silverbell, who asked but didn't have messaging turned on: yes, the title (and, indeed, all the chapter titles) are pulled from Eliot's The Wasteland. Nice catch._


	11. Under This Red Rock

One benefit to Shepard's three-person squads, Garrus realized as soon as they'd all crammed into the back of the Kodiak and lifted off, was physical space. He'd read the stats that said a Kodiak could hold fourteen, but he didn't see how. Fourteen small humans, perhaps, stacked one on top of the other from floor to ceiling. Fourteen children, maybe. Grunt had to account for the space of at least half a dozen all on his own, if the amount of complaining Zaeed was doing was anything to go by.

"If you don't get your goddamned elbow out of my goddamned face—"

"Your face is in the way of my elbow. These shuttles are built for pyjaks! When the krogan start building their own ships they'll be—"

"Flying bloody deathtraps? You met a lot of goddamned krogan engineers in your day?"

Evidently not content to let an argument rage without offering his input, Javik began, "In my cycle—"

Tali was pushed so close to Garrus' side that when she tilted her head up he could almost make out features behind the clouded purple glass. "You going to say anything?" she asked quietly.

Not, he suspected, that anyone could hear anything over the din of seven clanking, armored, complaining soldiers. She could probably have shouted and still gone unheard. Garrus cleared his throat. Javik was in the middle of explaining the superiority of Prothean engineering—nothing new—while Jack rolled her eyes. Grunt shifted away from Zaeed only to clock Javik in the mouth. Jack's rolled eyes became a snicker.

"Heed your betters, krogan—"

"Maybe we could—" Garrus began. Tali sighed. Funny how even with the bickering, Garrus heard _that._

On Garrus' other side, Kaidan swiftly shucked one of his gloves, brought a hand up to his mouth and let out a whistle so piercing the sudden silence afterward still seemed to ring with it. Garrus had to hand it to him: every head swiveled to face them. Even Javik's mouth was a little agape. The Kodiak jerked to the side, but righted itself almost immediately.

From the cockpit, Cortez muttered, "A little warning next time?"

Leaning forward, Garrus rested his elbows on his knees and met every set of eyes now looking at him one at a time. "Right," he said. "You have your squads. The _Normandy_'s not picking up the _Empire_'s signature in orbit, but right now we can't entirely trust our scanners and the storms are keeping us from detecting anything groundside."

"Then why are we here?" Grunt asked, gesturing broadly with one hand. Zaeed ducked away from it, but Garrus didn't miss the way the merc's hand twitched instinctively toward his weapon.

"Mars has the nearest major medical facility. We know they left Earth, so chances are they came through here even if they didn't stay."

"So we're… what? Looking for fingerprints?" Jack asked. "We gotta have more to go on. There's a whole fucking _planet_ down there."

Garrus nodded. "We're looking for clues. Witnesses. Worst case, we're looking for corpses. Anything out of the ordinary. Anything that might point us in a direction."

Jack's expression turned skeptical, her full lips pursed and her eyebrows pulled down. Her ponytail bobbed as she shook her head. "Anything out of the ordinary on a Reaper-blasted planet. You ever heard of looking for a—"

"Needle in a haystack?" Garrus supplied, a little bite in his subharmonics. One of Jack's eyebrows jerked up again. "I never said it would be easy. You want to sit here and keep a seat warm on the Kodiak, go right ahead." He paused, and when he blinked the backs of his eyelids showed the image of Shepard, blackened and broken, her dog tags catching the light, taking that breath. That one breath. He was hinging a whole lot of damned hope on a single inhale. "Look, even if they didn't actually bring her _to_ the facility, the people who have her would've been looking for something a hell of a lot stronger than medi-gel. Even if they're already gone, any bit of information we can use—or that Liara can use—will be better than the nothing we've got right now."

"Understood," Kaidan said. It was the kind of _understood_ that ended conversations—a soldier's _understood_—and everyone in the overcrowded cargo space shifted and shrugged and nodded, but no one argued. Or complained.

"ETA five minutes," Cortez said. "Might be bumpy. We've got a storm."

It was, indeed, bumpy. This time when Grunt's elbow ended up dangerously close to Zaeed's nose, no one raised their voice or snickered or rolled their eyes. A turbulent five minutes always seemed an eternity longer than a smooth five minutes, and by the time the Kodiak landed on the roof of the Lowell City medical complex, on the pad meant for incoming emergency vehicles, everyone who could look a little green did. Garrus swallowed his own unsettled stomach.

_Oh, come on, _Shepard mocked. _That was nothing! Remember the Mako? Hell, remember the Hammerhead? Now _that_ was some grade-A nausea. I could _not_ get the hang of that thing._

He'd have smiled if she'd actually been there to see it. _Thought you were immune._

_Hell, no. I just always did my vomiting in private. Knew I'd never hear the end of it otherwise. Look at the shit you lot gave Wrex after that time he couldn't stop himself._

_To be fair, it was hilarious._

_To be fair, I think I was the one who retold that story the most often. _He imagined her smirking as she said it. _Such a good one. Never knew a krogan could look that pathetic._

He missed her smirk.

Before releasing the hatch, Cortez turned and spoke over his shoulder. "It's bleak out there. Can't get a reading even fifty feet out. Hopefully you lot'll have better luck with your short-range communications and suit-board sensors. Might want a plan B, though, in case I can't get through to you."

"Three hours," Garrus said. "Keep an eye on your time. Everyone meets back here in three. No exceptions. Should be ample time to scour the facility."

A round of nods followed, before helmets were firmly fastened and weapons were checked and double-checked. Garrus opened the door and the whirling wall of red sand immediately blinded him. His visor tried valiantly to give him stats to work with, but even it could only do so much. He was pretty sure an entire squadron of enemy soldiers could've been standing a dozen feet away and he'd have missed them. Of course, he had to hope they'd have been just as blind.

"Right," he said, the tinny sound of his own voice echoing across the comms. "Alenko. Javik. Take the west wing. Should be a hatch, if the schematics Hackett provided are accurate. Tali. You and Grunt—"

"Go east," she replied. He could hear the smile in the tone of her voice, even as she reached behind and released her shotgun. "Back in three."

He didn't know exactly what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't the reality that faced him.

Garrus waited until both teams had vanished off his radar before setting out with Jack and Zaeed. Instead of his usual position at Shepard's six, rifle in hand, he took point with his assault rifle and Jack at his flank. Zaeed followed, and Garrus hoped the merc's Mantis was modded with an enhanced scope half as good as his own.

The blowing sand gusted, scraping against the sides of Garrus' helmet, dozens of tiny pings just loud enough to annoy. He turned his face away from the worst of it and followed the directions on the building map. After descending three ladders and crossing a narrow catwalk with his heart in his throat and his hand firmly on the railing, they hit the ground, and the hospital's main entrance.

It was too quiet. Even with the storm. Even after the Reapers. Drifts of red sand piled against the far wall almost up to the level of the windows, and the only markings in the silt were ones left by the wind itself, little whirls and eddies, eerily artistic. He told himself footprints could have vanished in the wind, but didn't really believe it.

This was the unmistakable quiet of dead things.

He could have gestured Jack and Zaeed forward—the wind down here wasn't creating the same blinding screen of dust—but he found he wanted the sound of voices. "Going in," he said.

"Feels fucked up," Jack replied.

"Goddamned fucked up," Zaeed echoed.

"Eyes sharp," Garrus said, to keep from agreeing with them.

Inside it was worse. Even through the filters of his helmet, he could smell how wrong the place was. Hospitals were clean and sharp, all antiseptic and antibacterial soap with the faint undercurrent of illness. This one smelled of sand. Dry and hot, and under it all the faint fetid odor of death. His nostrils twitched and even trapped within tight confines his mandibles gave a little flare of dismay.

The lights above them flickered and cracked, like whatever backup of a backup generator was keeping them on at all was about to finally give up. They moved slowly through the lobby and into the reception area, but the silence and emptiness and uneasy near-darkness remained. A child's stuffed toy lay beneath one of the chairs, next to a stack of old books with once-colorful covers.

"Was this Reapers?" Zaeed asked, his voice—even muffled by transmission over the comms—far too loud.

Garrus tore his gaze away from the books and the abandoned toy, shaking his head and gesturing for them to follow. This wasn't like Earth or Palaven. This was quieter. Sadder. This was Horizon. Both times. Stolen lives. Hopeless ones. Just as the silence outside had asked for voices to fill it, in here the quiet begged to remain undisturbed. They moved like ghosts through the hallways, the sound of their boots too loud against the tile. After two empty rooms, behind the third door they found bodies laid out in neat rows.

"It's a hospital," Zaeed muttered. "Why not take 'em to the goddamned morgue?"

"Maybe the morgue was full," Garrus replied. Kaidan's route went that way. Garrus did not envy him. Beside him, Jack shivered and then straightened her shoulders even more defiantly.

They found more dead in more rooms. He was no medical examiner, but he'd seen a lot of bodies in his time and these weren't new ones. Even _if_ Shepard's captors had come through here, these corpses weren't their doing. If he had to guess, he'd put most of them dead months. The pattern of what they discovered told a story he didn't want to admit could be truth: these people were dead because they'd been forgotten. The whole damned planet had been left to die when the Reapers came. Maybe some had been collected, turned to husks or paste or worse. But when the Reapers pulled out, they left survivors, and those survivors had no one. Nothing. Dwindling supplies and no help in sight, while their government clashed and their military dealt with bigger, more immediate threats on bigger, more immediate planets.

It was the damned _Valiant_, but instead of watching Shepard—and only Shepard—slowly starve, he was seeing the aftermath of a whole planet's slow death.

They'd come here last, he thought. To the hospital. The big, safe building at the center of the city, relatively untouched by Reaper fire, Reaper forces. They'd held out here for weeks, for months, waiting for someone to find them.

And no one had come.

He'd never wanted something to shoot so badly. A pyjak. A rabid varren. Anything. This? This wasn't a soldier's work. It wasn't even a cop's work. Mars was a planet that needed only benedictions now, to lay its many lost souls to rest.

"This is worse than fucking Pragia," Jack muttered, and Garrus couldn't help but silently agree with her.

#

Agitated by their failure to find anything of value on the planet's surface, the last thing Garrus wanted as he opened the Kodiak door and strode out into the shuttle bay was to find Traynor nervously shifting from foot to foot. Relief washed over her features as soon as his eyes met hers, but she waited until the disheartened squad had cleared out before speaking. Private, then. "The admiral's on vidcom, sir. He's been, uh, waiting for some time."

"How much is some?"

Traynor glanced down at her datapad and winced. "Two hours. He said he'd wait. As long as it took."

"Damn. He tell you anything?"

She was shaking her head even before he finished asking the question, not that he'd expected anything else. He rested a hand briefly on her shoulder and was relieved when her distress seemed to ebb. A little. At least he couldn't see the entirety of the whites around her irises anymore. "Look," he said, "it'd be a big help if you could make sure everyone—_everyone_—gets something to eat and spends a little time… doing something—anything—that takes their minds off what we saw down there."

"That bad?"

For a moment, he debated telling her a little lie to soothe the reality of red sand scouring white bones clean, of thin skeletons curled in corners of empty rooms. "Worse," he said. "Made Earth look like a vacation resort. I… couldn't tell you how much was the Reapers and how much was just…"

He saw understanding settle on her features. "The cost of war?"

"The cost of war," he agreed. "That damned ruthless calculus."

He took a few steps toward the elevator before Traynor's quiet voice stopped him. "Sir? Garrus? After the call… make sure _you_ get something to eat, won't you? And spend a little time doing something to take your mind off what you saw down there?" She paused. "I'm sure the battery could use a few moments of your time."

His mandibles flared in a weak smile. "Aye, aye, Specialist. Aye, aye."

As soon as the elevator doors closed, leaving him alone, he dragged his hands over the dust-stained blue of his armor. Red sand. White bone. Skeletons. Ghosts.

And nothing of Shepard. Nothing.


	12. In Our Empty Rooms

Garrus was so accustomed to seeing Privates Westmoreland and Campbell guarding the door between the CIC and the War Room that he caught himself mid-nod of greeting before he realized the room was empty. The scanner stood dark, and he shivered and ducked his head slightly as he passed under the arch. It should have been a positive thing: definitive proof the war was over, but instead he felt uneasy.

If the empty guard-post was eerie, it was nothing to the War Room itself. He stood on the threshold, gazing at the empty, unmanned banks of terminals, all their blank screens like staring eyes. Stepping down into the center of the room, he ran one hand along the curve of the darkened central terminal. He wondered how many of the precious war assets Shepard had fought and bled and pleaded for were now smoldering wreckage like the hard-won Crucible.

Or corpses. Like Mars.

Setting his shoulders, he strode into the QEC room without looking backward. He pressed the button next to the blinking light, called the admiral's name, and stood at polite attention to wait for him. It took a few moments—presumably the admiral was nearby, but hadn't actually been waiting near the Alliance's quantum entanglement communicator—before the older man's image formed, glowing and vaguely staticky.

"Vakarian," he said.

"Sir," Garrus replied at once. "I'm afraid the news out of Mars isn't good."

"No sign of Shepard?"

"No sign of anyone, Admiral. I… I'm sorry."

The limitations of the QEC meant Garrus couldn't perceive if Hackett went pale, but the admiral's shoulders sank and he shook his head. "Such losses were to be expected. Of course."

"Expectation and confirmation are different."

"Indeed." Hackett lifted his chin and set his jaw and the moment of grief was over almost as soon as it had begun. "That matter is, I'm afraid, secondary. I had hoped, of course, your findings might make my news irrelevant."

"Sir?"

"We've had a demand. Ransom. A million credits."

Garrus' mandibles tucked tight to his cheeks, though he didn't give any other outward sign of his distress. C-Sec didn't make deals with kidnappers. Neither did the turian military. If Hackett's grim expression was any indicator, humanity had similar reservations.

Garrus would have paid the sum twice over. A dozen times. A hundred.

Even the monotone light and the wavering glow of the communicator couldn't mask the piercing sharpness of the admiral's gaze. "The funds are a non-issue. If we trusted them to keep their end of the bargain we'd pay anything. You know that."

Garrus tilted his head a little, trying to parse the phrase for conciliation. Hackett's expression gave nothing away; if the man was merely trying to placate him, he was doing a damned fine job.

Then again, Garrus was both cynical and practical enough to have no doubt the Alliance wanted their hero back alive for a whole host of their own reasons.

"It's all a little convenient, isn't it?" Garrus asked. "The _Normandy_'s barely out of orbit and a ransom demand comes in?"

"You're certainly not the only one who thinks so."

"You checked with, uh, our resident source of information?"

Even broken up by the static of their connection, Garrus saw the faint twist of Hackett's lips. "She's the one who deduced coordinates based on their request and some algorithm I'm too much of an old soldier to explain in anything resembling detail. It did sound very… thorough."

"She speaks quickly when she's excited," Garrus agreed, letting himself feel the faintest sliver of hope. If Liara thought—but no. He'd hoped too much before Mars. He wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. "I have trouble understanding it, and I have experience. And a tech background."

Hackett looked as though he wanted to pace, but instead merely linked his hands behind his back. "We're sending coordinates she came up with. They were accurate as of a couple of hours ago. More than that, they match the rendezvous point they want to set."

"Sloppy," Garrus said.

"Or a trap."

"And you want us to spring it?"

"In a manner of speaking. We're buying you time. The coordinates are about three days out from your current location. I'll make a deal, try and set up an exchange. Tell them I'm sending a team; hell, I'll even send out another ship, if that's what I need to do to convince them."

Garrus nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. "And while you're stalling, we slip in undetected."

"Even so." Hackett reached up and stroked his chin, his brow furrowing in thought. "Still, it is best to assume—"

"They'll be ready and waiting?" Garrus interjected. "Admiral, if there's one thing you can count on me to do, it's plan for the worst case scenario."

Even as he said it, though, he thought of the abandoned child's toy beneath the chair in the hospital reception room. He thought of the bodies in their various states of inanition, various states of decay. He tried not to wonder what the most desperate had done. He tried not to think of the ones whose fatal wounds had been hopelessly self-inflicted.

He hadn't been prepared for that.

"Did you know people down there?" Garrus asked, aware it was probably impertinent and certainly wasn't his business. Still, he couldn't stop the words.

Hackett was arrested by the strange, frozen stillness of the shocked, of the wounded. This time the sorrow didn't immediately vanish, and when he spoke, softly, each word sank heavy as a stone into the silence. "I know people everywhere, Vakarian. Knew." Garrus watched the man slowly rebuild his armor, piece by piece, word by word. "The time for mourning, for honoring the fallen—civilian and military alike—will come. First we must look to the living."

Garrus straightened to attention. "Understood, sir."

"Yes. I thought you would." Hackett lifted his arm and Garrus saw the shadowy outline of his omni-tool flicker to life. "Patching through the coordinates now on your private frequency. I don't have to tell you this is our best chance. Hackett out."

Garrus didn't linger in the darkness when the call ended.

The admiral was right, after all. They had the living to look to.

#

To be fair, after Garrus visited the cockpit to deliver the coordinates—"It's okay, boss, you don't actually have to stand there and watch me press the buttons."—he did _consider_ following his own orders and heading down to the crew deck. He needed to speak with Dr. Chakwas. He ought to check in on the ground team, make sure they'd all taken his insistence on downtime seriously. He knew he should find out what trouble Solana had gotten herself into during their absence. Hell, he even considered Traynor's suggestion of spending some time tweaking the Thanix's firing algorithms just for fun (and possibly to irritate Ken Donnelly). In the end, however, when the elevator doors slid shut, he found himself headed for the top floor and the quarters he still couldn't entirely think of as his own.

At least one of his problems resolved itself when he found his sister sitting outside his cabin door, datapad on her lap and omni-tool interface flashing as she took rapid notes. She glanced up at him and didn't quite smile. "This is me respecting your personal space," she said. "Aren't you proud?"

"You know, most people don't require a commendation for adhering to the basic rules of civilized society."

"I'm sorry, how many times did you break into my room when we were kids?"

The chuckle escaped before he could swallow it. "You and I both know I was only ever trying to recover whatever thing of mine you'd most recently stolen."

"Including _my_ diary?"

Garrus shrugged. "You went too far when you took that rifle scope I'd saved _months_ for."

"Petty vengeance."

"Justice," he retorted. "And excellent fodder for blackmail."

"I don't think the words _justice_ and _blackmail_ are supposed to be used in the same sentence."

He tapped her lightly on the head with one knuckle. "Fine. You win. It was revenge. Pure and sweet. I regret nothing."

"I worry about you, G."

_She's not the only one._

_I'm fine, Shepard._

_You and I both know that's my line, big guy. No way it's going to fly with me._

He realized he'd been lost in thought—and silent—too long when Solana reached out and touched his hand. Garrus didn't quite startle, but he pulled back a bit too quickly, a bit too suddenly. Her expression was fond and weary and said she saw entirely too much. "Do you want company?"

Garrus shook his head.

Solana, however, leaned forward and wrapped her fingers around his, giving them a little squeeze. This time he didn't pull away. "Let me rephrase," she said. "Do you _need_ company?"

Without answering, he pounded the panel of the door a little harder than strictly necessary and gestured for her to precede him.

A few moments later, she let out a low sound of surprise. "Well. It's a shame it's so damned _small_. Wherever do you keep all your things?"

Garrus snorted. "Ridiculous, isn't it? You could cram a dozen turians in here."

"_Two_ dozen quarians. Maybe three."

Garrus gave her a look, and she lifted her shoulders in a guileless shrug. "I only meant space on the Flotilla's at a premium, from what I hear. Though now they have their homeworld back…" Solana moved forward until her chair balanced on the top of the stairs down to the main living area. Garrus wondered what she saw. The bed that looked unslept in? The half-finished chess game he'd been playing against the voice in his head? The scrap of black cloth much too small and wrongly-shaped to belong to him flung over the back of the couch, next to the pillow that _did_ look slept on? "You know it was the krogan who helped us escape on Palaven, in the end?" She lifted a hand and laid it against the glass of the fish tank. One of the eels came over to inspect it. "I was so… I was almost gone. I can say that now. I was dying. My leg was beyond messed up, and then there were these krogan. I thought I _had_ died. I didn't understand they were there to help. One of them picked me up and I started screaming. Not because it hurt—though it did—but because I was imagining those nightmare stories we heard as kids about krogan literally tearing the plates off their turian prey and I just… they had to knock me out to get me to stop. They got us to the transport. Without them…" She took a deep breath and turned to face him again. He wanted to scream a little, seeing the look on her face. It was too much like pity. "When I woke up, Dad told me about the krogan-turian alliance. Communications were so bad we hadn't heard. Hell. I probably wasn't the only turian who thought retribution for that old crime had finally come." Solana shook her head, her gaze sweeping the room once more. "And _she_ did that. Made it happen. Somehow healed that old wound."

"Bandaged it, certainly. Time will tell."

"The way the primarch talks about her… I've never heard respect like that."

"She usually gets her way when she's determined. She's… Shepard." Garrus didn't bother attempting to keep the admiration from his tone. His sister's expression turned uneasy, her eyes gazing over his shoulder to fix on the bank of ship models as her fingers pulled at the hem of her tunic. "You going to tell me why you were really lingering outside my door, Sol?"

She sighed, folding her fidgeting hands in her lap. "Honestly? I was wondering if I could get, uh, an introduction at some point. To the rest of the crew, I mean. They don't know me, and… I'd rather not repeat my misstep with your quarian friend."

"Her name's Tali."

"I think her name is still Ma'am as far as I'm concerned. And for the foreseeable future."

"You can't be surprised, Sol. You hacked her ship. Without asking permission."

"Hacking's not usually a permission-asking sort of activity." She grimaced. "Fine. I take your point just like I took hers." She lifted her hands. "Above-board only."

"Unless you're sure you won't get caught."

Solana's mandibles flared wide in genuine surprise. "_Garrus._"

"They don't know you, but _I_ do." Her affront disappeared behind a grin. "All right. Introductions, I suppose, are definitely in order. Are you still decent with cards in your hand?"

"I had a good teacher, didn't I?"

Garrus touched his fingers to her shoulder and she leaned her cheek briefly against his hand. "Let them win once in a while or they'll never warm to you."

She snorted. "What part of 'I had a good teacher' didn't you understand, G? Sometimes you play for credits—"

"And sometimes you play for friendship. Yeah, yeah. I'm damned clever."

"And so modest," she griped, but her smile didn't fade.

He sighed. "I think you know me too well, Sol. You came up here because you knew I was going to retreat—"

"—And brood," she interjected. "Retreat and brood."

"And _think_," he contradicted.

"No. Definitely brood. Probably with a side of worrying and fretting about things you can't possibly change."

He glowered instead of admitting she might—_might_—have grasped a little of the truth. "Just so you know? I am _not_ letting you win. Not once."

She smirked. "I don't need your pity. Or your handouts. I've had nothing to do for weeks but play cutthroat Skyllian Five tournaments with bored refugees. I think I can take you."


	13. The Expected Guest

Garrus crossed his arms over his chest, gazing out the cockpit window at the hulking freighter. It matched the _Empire_'s signature and was located exactly where Liara'd said it would be, but beyond that, it was a mystery. He didn't like it. If anything less than Shepard's life had been hanging on the mission's success, he'd have called it off. Too many variables out of his control. Too many avenues for disaster to strike. Something felt off. Something felt _wrong_. He just wasn't sure what, exactly, it was.

"Wish I could give you more, boss," Joker said, frustration giving his voice a sharp edge. Garrus was starting to forget what the pilot's voice sounded like without that patina of bitterness. Joker's fingers moved over the interface fruitlessly before spasming into a brief fist. Garrus made a note to bring up his concerns later, with Chakwas. Anger could prove potent fuel, but not if it led to suicidal risks or sloppy mistakes. Garrus knew that better than anyone, and he was starting to see signs of fraying in Joker he simply couldn't ignore. "Maybe if—but it doesn't matter. They've got everything so jammed they might as well be running as silent as we are. Could be a ghost ship. Could be packed full of men with guns like sardines in a can. It's a big can. It could hold a lot of damned sardines."

Garrus tilted his head but didn't ask; the meaning was clear enough. "That's why I'm bringing Jack," he explained. "You ever seen her rip through a squad at close quarters?"

Joker snorted. "You know I haven't. And damn, you know I don't want to. She's scary enough when she's not glowing. Or on a homicidal rampage."

"I heard that, asshole," Jack called from just outside the airlock.

Joker turned and lifted an eyebrow. "You sure about this boss?"

"Alenko's filling the role of diplomat," Garrus said. "Jack's the hopefully unnecessary weapon of mass destruction."

Jack laughed. "Yeah. Point me, shoot, and watch shit burn."

"I said _scary enough_," Joker called out. "You don't have to convince me."

"Commence boarding procedure, Joker," Garrus said. "You know the plan. If we're not back in an hour, Tali, Javik and Zaeed come after us."

"Sure you don't want them in there first? I mean, now _there's _a pair of diplomats. Javik can tell them how inferior they are while Zaeed smashes their faces in with the butt of his rifle."

Kaidan, leaning against the bulkhead, rolled his eyes a little. "I think we're hoping no faces need smashing."

Joker's snicker sounded even sharper than his voice, but Garrus thought its cut was mostly internal. "Right. Maybe _you're_ hoping that, but I doubt everyone else is on that page. Or even in that book. Something tells me this isn't going to be solved with handshakes."

"Joker," Garrus repeated, stern. The edge in his subharmonics wasn't frustration. It wasn't even anger. It was the kind of command that dared dissent and promised punishment. He didn't have to raise his voice; even without subharmonics of his own, he knew Joker understood him perfectly well. "Commence boarding procedure. Now."

The pilot's eyes narrowed, and for a moment Garrus thought he was going to protest. He didn't. His attention snapped back to his controls. Garrus watched him work a moment longer before turning back to his waiting squad. Kaidan and Jack were already suited up; he sent them on ahead with a wave. Grunt remained behind, watching Garrus' movements.

"Kill anything that comes through this door without knocking first," Garrus said. "No questions asked. And if none of us come back—"

"I know," Grunt rumbled. "Last line of defense." Grunt lifted his shoulders in a shrug and he glowered. "I heard you the first time. I don't like it, but I'll do it."

Kaidan, already-helmeted, handed Garrus his helmet as soon as the door slid shut behind him. Garrus nodded his gratitude. He didn't like what helmets did to his sight lines, but they had no idea what they'd find on the ship; he didn't want to take the risk that life support could be non-functional.

"You know Joker's losing his shit, right?" Jack murmured, slipping into her own mask and then rolling her neck to get used to the change in weight. One of her vertebrae gave an audible crack and she smiled, evidently satisfied. "Coming apart at the seams?"

Garrus nodded, and Jack turned her huge dark eyes his way. He saw the question in them. He ignored it. A moment later, she nodded and unclipped her pistol. "As long as you know," she said, and he didn't need subharmonics to pick up the second meaning in her words.

He was saved answering by the airlock's light switching from red to green.

They stepped out into the _Empire_'s airlock, and from the airlock into a narrow room filled with boxes. No one jumped out at them from behind the ample cover, but they ducked anyway, Kaidan to his left and Jack to his right, effortless and controlled, as if they'd always worked together. It was strange, really, realizing they hadn't. Garrus was the common thread, linking them together. And Shepard. Of course. Shepard's training. Shepard's expectations. Shepard's team following Shepard's lead. She'd made good soldiers of them all. Good teammates.

For the space of a heartbeat, two, Garrus was frozen under the weight of memory, the feeling of being in two places—two times—at once. He was on the _Empire_ with Alenko and Jack. He was also back on the damned _Fedele_, younger and brasher, watching Shepard rifle through a wall-safe while he vibrated with impatience behind her, desperate to put a bullet in Saleon's head.

_You should poke around now,_ echoed her voice, soft and laughing in the back of his head. _Never know when you might find an old set of Phoenix armor. _

_Never going to happen, Shepard._

_You're such a spoilsport now that you don't let me play dress-up with you anymore. You look lovely in pink. Brings out your eyes._

Instead of answering her, he gestured for Jack and Kaidan to flank him and sweep the room while he kept watch through the scope of his rifle. They returned a few moments later, shaking their heads as they fell in beside him, poised, pistols ready. He removed his helmet and the others followed suit. The air was a little stale, the way recycled air in older ships was often stale, but otherwise unremarkable. No scent of fire or battle; nothing but dust.

At least, he supposed, it wasn't the can of sardines situation Joker'd been afraid of. Yet. His visor's sensors were as jammed as the _Normandy_'s had been, and his suit-board computer wasn't giving him anything better. Every door was a question whose answer he couldn't anticipate. Perhaps they'd catch the kidnappers off-guard; the ransom exchange Hackett had arranged wasn't meant to happen for another day. Perhaps they'd walk into quarters or a mess and find the entire damned crew eating bad rations, weapons nowhere to hand.

Or perhaps the next door would be the one with the ambush behind it.

He _hated_ going in blind.

Even though he hadn't been on a Kowloon class ship in years—since the _Fedele_, or perhaps the _Ontario_—the layout was familiar. They stepped out into a narrow hallway, also empty. At least the lights were on.

_At least there isn't a child's abandoned toy beneath an abandoned chair in an abandoned hospital on a planet left to die._

He blinked, raising his rifle. Whatever jamming tech they'd used was messing with his scope's advanced sensors, too. Bastards. Switching out the Widow for his Mattock, he gestured for Kaidan to hack the next door. The red panel glowed like a malevolent eye, unblinking. The moment it switched to green, Kaidan dropped, bringing his pistol up.

The room was empty. Not just empty of targets—it was _empty_. Grey walls and grey floor and grey ceiling, unbroken even by scattered belongings or boxes of cargo. Empty.

Garrus didn't like it. Everything about this ship—this mission—was giving him the uncomfortable itch under his plates that always spelled trouble. Or disappointment. Or failure.

Or all of the above.

A second door opened onto a similarly vacant room; they found a few boxes of rations and a rickety table behind the third. At least this was a sign of habitation, though the individuals who'd sat on the chairs and eaten the food were nowhere to be seen. Dust motes danced in the air as they passed, and the uneasiness grew instead of fading. The next room contained stacked bunks, bare even of bedding.

The fucking ship was _empty._

It wasn't quite Mars, but the disappointment was still stark. It wasn't that he'd _wanted_ to walk into a trap, but being sent halfway across the system only to find shadows and dust was enough to stoke the grief he'd been carrying since the final push on Earth into full-blown rage. If he'd been alone, he'd have shot something—a box of rations, the wall—just to hear a gunshot. Just to feel like he was doing _something._

He wasn't alone, though. And he wasn't going to add evidence to fuel Jack's earlier worry. The last door led to another narrow hallway, and at the end of this second hall another red light blinked at them, promising another letdown.

Bracing himself for yet another empty room full of yet more empty boxes, and already wondering what their next step would be after this second crushing failure, Garrus lifted his omni-tool and began to hack the encrypted lock.

The door slid open.

This room, the final room, had been transformed into a mobile treatment center; a tiny little hospital. The only real furniture was a large white bed with tilted mattress, surrounded by a bank of beeping machines. Tubes and IVs and cables connected the machines to a figure on the bed. From the door they could see only the fall of red hair cascading over a shoulder, the hint of a profile, and a slim white hand turning the page of a book—a paper book, not a datapad—propped on a blanketed lap.

At Garrus' side, Kaidan sucked in a incredulous little breath, as though he'd been punched in the stomach without warning.

Garrus knew the feeling.

The woman in the bed turned her head and lifted her eyes, big and grey-green, with their dark fringe of lashes.

The eyes were entirely familiar, and impossibly blank. The twitch of her eyebrows wasn't recognition. It wasn't even surprise. It was a sort of mild understanding, like an expectation of hers had been met. Garrus took a step forward—stumbled a step forward—and the woman on the bed slipped a finger between the pages of her book, flipping the cover closed.

"You must be the recovery team," she said, smiling. The smile was like her eyes: hers, undeniably _hers_, but mild and unrecognizing. It was the kind of smile he'd seen her bestow upon strangers a hundred times. A thousand. It was the smile she saved for shopkeepers and fans and politicians who hadn't annoyed her yet. "The doctors said you'd come. I admit, I was expecting you a little sooner. The medical team's been gone at least a day." She lifted the hand not holding the book and his eyes followed the tube that ran from it to one of the machines. "Good thing they left dinner."

Behind him, Jack muttered, "What the fuck?" under her breath.

Garrus' own thoughts echoed hers. He took another step forward, the barrel of his gun dipping. "Shepard?"

"Of course," she said, raising her shoulders in a shrug. At the apex of the movement she winced, as if in pain she hadn't anticipated. Garrus took another step closer, wanting to see for himself what was causing the pain, wanting to check for new wounds, new scars. Shepard's eyes narrowed, and he thought he saw the ghost of fear—fear, of _him_—slip across her features. He knew it broke every protocol imaginable, but he holstered his gun entirely, leaving his hands empty and placating. Shepard's bland smile returned, though a little wariness remained in her eyes.

With a hint of amusement—and oh, Spirits, the amusement was her, too, but it was so very, very wrong on this empty ship in the middle of nowhere—she said, "Were you expecting someone else?"

_Tell me something true._

_Why_, he thought, aware of his own ragged breathing, his own elevated heart rate,_ am I still hearing you in my head? You're right there. You're _rightthere_. _

_You're right there looking at me as though we've never met._

Perhaps _he_ was the one in desperate need of something real, something true, something that didn't feel like a nightmare brought to life.

_Tell me something true._

"Shepard," Kaidan said, his voice too rough and low and pleading, "are you—don't you recognize us?"

A kind of pained understanding furrowed her brow. "Should I?" she asked. "I'm sorry. They… well. They're still working on the memory thing. Were you the same team who found me? I don't remember much from the early days. I guess I was pretty messed up."

Garrus knew he had to find words, but a wild panic twisted his gut and froze his throat. His mandibles flared and he couldn't quite swallow the low keening note his subvocals were making. Shepard glanced over his shoulder, toward Kaidan, and said, "I—sorry, the turian's making me uneasy. Do you think he could wait outside?"

The turian.

_The turian._

Garrus swallowed, and, subharmonics still raw with grief, said, "I'm Garrus Vakarian."

Her smile turned tight, strained. This was the smile saved for politicians who _had_ annoyed her, and people she didn't much like but who required her politeness.

She had _never_ smiled that smile at him before. Not once. Not ever. He wanted to close his eyes just so he wouldn't have to see it, but he couldn't. He couldn't look away. "Do you mind, uh, Mr. Vakarian?"

"What the _fuck_?" Jack repeated, shaking her head.

_I should go. I should _go.

It wasn't funny. It wasn't funny at all.

"Of course," Garrus said. Managed to say. He thought Jack reached out to touch his arm as he passed, but he didn't feel it. Behind him, he heard Shepard speaking, but he didn't turn around, didn't stop. She wasn't talking to him. She didn't want to talk to him.

Doctor Chakwas was an expert on all things Shepard; she'd know what to do. She had to know what to do.

But his plates still itched and his stomach still twisted and in his head he heard Shepard's voice saying _the turian's making me uneasy _over and over and over.


	14. Between Two Lives

_The night air is redolent with the perfume of gardenias and roses, even though she knows neither plant grows in the vicinity. Not for lack of trying. Or money spent on gardeners. _

_Her foster mother spares no expense when it comes to making an impression, and if the society papers are raving about the perfection of evening garden parties scented with gardenia and rose, by God, _this_ party will be the height to which all others aspire. _

_She imagines black-clad hirelings in balaclavas shuffling through the bushes with spray bottles filled with gardenia-and-rose-scented water, or dozens of impossibly-expensive air fresheners hidden amongst the bunting and scentless bouquets, and she laughs even though her feet hurt and the soda water is doing exactly _nothing_ to take the wine out of her dress. She doesn't even know who did the spilling; she just remembers looking down and seeing the swiftly-spreading stain marring the white silk at her abdomen._

_"What do you need me to do?" one of the serving staff girls had asked, desperate, her grey-green eyes wild, her red hair in disarray. _

_Come to think of it, perhaps the server had been the one to cause the spill. Poor girl. No wonder she was so upset. Not that it matters now. The damage is already done._

_The resistance of the stain makes her swallow her laughter almost as soon as it bubbles up; they will miss her inside soon. Even now, she's meant to be dancing with one or the other of her foster father's important friends, and she's aware of the clock ticking. There'll be hell to pay if she's the reason the party is ruined, if her absence is what the society columns are discussing tomorrow instead of sublime food and beautiful people in beautiful clothes and gardenia-scented air. Her foster mother's disappointment is legendary. She shivers. Her stomach aches and when she tries to breathe the stench of flowers makes her head hurt._

_Dabbing the cloth against the left side of her midsection where the stain is worst, she succeeds only in turning even more of the white a ghastly shade of pink. Perhaps if she uses her shawl as a very wide belt. It won't be pretty, but it'll be better than absence—_

_Footsteps on the path steal her attention from the hopeless rescue attempt. Her little bench is in a particularly shadowy corner, and she half-expects the newcomer to keep going, but instead he pauses, and the sudden silence is an expectant one. A nightbird chirps. She's pretty sure the birds come from the same party-supply store as the gardenia water._

_"Hello?" she asks. It echoes in the dark. Hello, hello, hello like the whispers of strangers. She swallows to moisten a suddenly dry throat and succeeds only in making herself cough._

_The man who approaches is tall and dark; even in the shadows she can tell that much. She should probably know him—she's been introduced to countless people this evening—but his features are hidden by both the darkness of the garden and the shadows cast by the brim of his hat and she can't quite make him out. Perhaps he is one of her foster father's friends, come to claim his dance with her. She sighs, but before she can explain her predicament, he says quietly, "You're not supposed to be here."_

_She laughs again, this time at his audacity. Even to her own ears the mirth rings hollow, a little too high-pitched, a little too strained. "I beg your pardon? This is my party."_

_"Is it?" he asks. "You're certain?"_

_She parts her lips, prepared to protest, but something stops her. His voice is strangely familiar, deep and resonant. The kind of voice a person might trust. He steps a little nearer, and she sees he's wearing the trim blue dress uniform of an Alliance officer. The bars and decorations mean something, but she has no idea what. She's pretty sure he's important though. He carries himself like an important man, shoulders back and chin lifted. And only important men are invited to the parties her foster parents throw._

_Until now, the shadows and the color of the fabric has hidden it, but as he moves nearer she sees the darker patch on his abdomen, almost identical to her own. She reaches out with her pinkish-stained white cloth before she can think better of it—she still needs to clean herself up, after all—and says, frowning, "Oh. Someone spilled their wine on you, too."_

_"God," he says, and the heaviness of the single word brings incomprehensible tears to her eyes. "Feels like ages since I just sat down."_

_"Best seats in the house," she offers, shifting sideways. "If you're looking to avoid all the business inside, I mean." He tilts his head the way a puzzled child examines a problem they don't understand. The intensity of his gaze bothers her but she doesn't look away. That intensity reminds her of someone else. She can't think who, though, and pushes the thought away. It makes her uncomfortable. Uneasy. A few moments later, he sinks down next to her and instead of gardenias and roses, she smells something sharper, bitter and metallic._

_The wine, she decides, is a terrible vintage. Or it's corked. Her foster mother is going to have someone's head when she finds out._

_"Did it go all the way through?" she asks. When he says nothing, she presses, "The wine. Did it go through your jacket? Here, let me—"_

_"You did good, child."_

_Her reaction is sudden, violent; wine-stain forgotten, she flings herself to her feet and glares down at the interloper with the deceptively kind voice. Her white skirts swirl around her and she sees streaks of wine where she hadn't noticed them before. The dress is ruined. Everything is ruined. _

_He's not looking up at her, so she sees only the brim of his hat and the unprotected nape of his neck._

_"You don't know anything about me," she declares, edging a little farther away from the bench. Her delicate heels scrape too-loudly against the pebbled path. She wants to run but her breath catches and her stomach twists and she can only force herself to take another small step backward. "You—you're making me uneasy."_

_He raises his face then, and for a moment she almost knows his name, almost understands how he fits into the puzzle of her life. "You're not supposed to be here," he repeats, his lips turning up in a faint, pained smile even as his hands clutch at his belly. "You should go."_

_The words stop her in her tracks, and she puts out a hand. With nothing to grab onto, she stumbles, falling forward, reaching desperately to break her fall. Her hands scrape against the tiny stones. She hears the delicate fabric of her dress tear, and just for an instant the bitter smell of blood drowns out even the memory of gardenias and roses—_

"—Long will she be out?"

"I couldn't say. Shall I wake her—"

"Don't."

"Garrus—"

"Who is she? What—"

"_Enough_. This is not a conversation we ought to have now. Here."

She kept her breath slow and even, fighting the pull of sleep and the garden, trying instead to focus on the voices around her. For some reason they weren't the ones she was expecting. The woman—and that was strange, she didn't remember a woman from before—had an accent. British. The other voice was dual-toned. Alien. Memory came back in a rush so sudden it was almost painful. The turian from the recovery squad. His name had been Garrus, if she remembered right, though the fog of painkillers made everything a bit blurry. The doctor—yes, the woman was the doctor; not her usual doctor, a different one, but hadn't they said a new doctor would come? She thought she remembered that from within the fog—had put her under while they moved her from one ship to the other.

For the pain, the new doctor had said.

She hadn't felt like protesting, because the pain was constant and relief from it always hard-won. There was only so much fight in a person.

_We'll get through this. We always do._

The turian's sigh distracted her before she could question where exactly that thought came from. If she'd ever heard a sound more resigned, she didn't know when. "I need to know. Is this another of Cerberus'… spares?"

"Not as far as I can tell."

She almost opened her eyes at the sound the turian made, like he'd been punched in the stomach, punctuated by a low keening, almost like a cry. When he spoke, his tone was rough and sharp and startling; the vocal equivalent of walking on broken glass. She shivered, and fought the urge to close her hands into fists at her sides. "So we've got a Shepard who doesn't remember she's Shepard. We know nothing about who took her, what they've done to her, or what possible motives they might have had—"

"Come now, Garrus. Kaidan said she answered to her name easily enough right from the beginning. She does appear to know who she is. It may be temporary, or entirely treatable. You mustn't jump to the worst possible scenario. I'll know more when she wakes—"

"She didn't know m—us. She didn't recognize us." She had to strain to hear him, and she felt a pang of regret for the way she'd spoken to him back on the ship. It was only he'd been looking at her so intently, and she hadn't ever been so close to a turian before; she couldn't _help_ the frisson of fear—

One of the machines started beeping and she realized it was because her own heart rate was elevated.

_You're not supposed to be here._

"Can you open your eyes for me, Commander?" A moment later, the doctor tried again, more insistently, "Shepard? Can you open your eyes?"

If he was right—if she _had_ forgotten—if she _knew_ this turian and all these people, these strangers—what else might be missing? The incomprehensible reason she was referred to by a rank? By a surname? She didn't remember the last time anyone had used her given name. She swallowed hard. Of course she didn't. Her memory was pocked with holes; she had no idea how much was missing. Was the name she remembered even her name at all? The machine's concerned noises increased in tempo and she forced her eyes open to keep from being pushed under again, back to the garden, back to the cloying, manufactured scent of gardenias and roses. Back to the blood—no, the wine, the wine on her dress.

"You're fine," the doctor soothed. She had a nice voice. The kind of voice a person might trust. It had been wine on her dress in the garden, hadn't it? And on the jacket of the man who'd told her she didn't belong? Whose voice was familiar but whose name she no longer knew? "Take a deep breath."

She tried, but her chest felt tight and her head felt hot and the whole room stank of flowers and antiseptic. She was aware of the turian—of Garrus—stepping closer but he froze as soon as her eyes found his. The right side of his face was a mess of healed scars. Between his height and the size of his shoulders—probably mostly armor, she tried to reassure herself—he loomed. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, wanted to ask him to leave the room again, but something about the way the doctor had spoken with him earlier made her hold her tongue. It was strange, but she thought maybe he was actually the one in _charge._

Whatever he saw on her face made him step back, but his eyes—or at least the eye she could see, the one not hidden by the glowing interface of a visor—never left her. She felt laid bare before that gaze, but if he'd been human, she'd have said the tilt of his head was confused, perhaps even unhappy.

She didn't know what to do with that.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she said, and this, finally, was enough to break the turian's intense scrutiny. His eyes widened and his mandibles flared and then he glanced away, toward the floor, away from her.

"None of that," the doctor admonished lightly, still gentle, still kind. "You may not remember it at the moment, but this is precisely where you're meant to be."

"I'm sorry," she added in an embarrassed rush. Only she wasn't sure if she was sorry for being here, or sorry for hurting him, or sorry for something else she couldn't remember. Perhaps some combination of all three. Either way it cut deep, and once again the doctor had to remind her to breathe. She smelled roses. She smelled blood. Even though she suspected neither was actually present. Hirelings in balaclavas with spray bottles full of blood-and-rose scent.

_Tell me something true_, she thought, but she couldn't bring herself to say the words aloud. Not after the reaction the last ones had wrought.

The turian—Garrus—crossed his arms over his chest and she had the strangest feeling it wasn't a disapproving or disappointed gesture. He looked for all the world as though the weight of his own arms was the only thing keeping him from breaking.

She didn't know what to do with that, either. She didn't know what to do with any of it.


	15. Neither Living Nor Dead

Traynor was waiting for him in the QEC room. He didn't ask how she knew and she didn't offer an explanation, but when he stalked in, she was already there, brow furrowed as she perused the contents of her datapad.

The line in her forehead smoothed out too carefully and too quickly to be quite natural as she raised her head, and though he could see the questions chasing each other behind her eyes and in the lift of her eyebrows—_how is she? How are you? Is she going to be okay? Are you?_—she did not give voice to them. It was a small mercy. He was disproportionally glad of it. He knew those questions and more would require answers soon, but not now. Not yet.

"Can you ask them to get in touch with Liara?" Even as quietly as he spoke, the sound was too much, too jarring. The scene in the medbay kept playing over and over in his head, and even the memory of Shepard's _I'm not supposed to be here_ was enough to change the quality of his tone. He didn't want to know what his sister would pick up from his subvocals. "I'd like to actually speak with her, if I can." He paused, weighing his next request. "My father, too, if it's not too much trouble."

Traynor asked no questions about this, either. Reaching into a pocket, she produced a dextro ration bar and held it out until he took it. Even the crinkle of his fingers closing around the packaging grated, reminding him of the slowly-building headache he'd been fighting since the _Empire._ He needed to sleep. He didn't remember the last time he'd gotten more than an hour or two at a stretch, and Chakwas had flat-out refused to give him another shot of stims.

While Traynor worked, speaking quietly over the comms to the technician on the other end, Garrus peeled back the metallic wrapper of the meal bar and ate slowly, methodically, tasting nothing. Only when the first swallow hit his stomach did he realize exactly how hungry he was. Too many stims, and this wasn't the neat little kill-zone funnel of his perch on Omega. There he could watch everything, be aware of everything. Now? Now he knew damned well he was seeing only the smallest piece of a very big picture and he had no idea who might be creeping up on his unprotected six.

When the last bite disappeared, he leaned his aching head against the wall and closed his eyes. If he'd had thinner cases with less clues to go on, he didn't know when. He might've been blocked by red tape and jurisdiction at every turn during his investigation into Saren, but at least he'd had a _name_.

_And then you had me,_ Shepard mused. Her voice held a ghost of a laugh. _And I did all the hard work for you. Of course, that was back when the sight of you didn't elevate my heart rate or dilate my pupils. For either of the reasons those things happen. _She paused and he thought he was free of her, but then she added, all laughter gone,_ I think I liked it better when it was love, though, instead of fear._

"Shut up," he whispered aloud, just as Traynor stepped back from the console and Hackett materialized in glowing blue behind her.

She didn't ask him a question about that, either. Her expression told him she'd heard it, though. "Thanks, Traynor," he said. For the food. For getting Hackett on the line. For not asking. "Can you gather the crew? I don't have a lot of answers to the questions they'll have, but they deserve to know what I do. Make it the lounge. I have a feeling more than one will want a drink."

She acknowledged his request with a brisk nod. He waited until she'd left before stepping close to the console.

"Vakarian," Hackett said. He wasn't wearing his hat this time, and his grey hair was ruffled in a way Garrus found vaguely unsettling. "We've been waiting on a report for hours. What the hell happened out there?"

He knew then he should have thought about this moment, these words, more carefully, because of course the question had been coming, and of course this was one that required an immediate answer.

Of course he had no idea what to say.

"We found her," he began, slowly, each word a reminder of _I'm not supposed to be here_ and a familiar face completely devoid of recognition.

"Thank God—"

"She's been… compromised."

Like a man accustomed to hearing bad news, Hackett merely folded his hands behind his back and inclined his head. When Garrus didn't immediately fill the silence with an explanation, he raised his eyebrows meaningfully and said, "How so, Vakarian?"

"She didn't know us, sir."

"Didn't know you," Hackett echoed, and accustomed to bad news or not, Garrus couldn't pretend the man was unaffected. The admiral's shoulders hunched and he gave his head a slow shake. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Garrus inhaled deeply, gathering his distress and pushing it to the side in favor of facts. Clean, cold, simple facts. "Doctor Chakwas is still attempting to determine the severity of the amnesia. Whatever happened at the end left a number of physical injuries as well, and the doctor believes some of Shepard's… augmentations must be underperforming for her to be in such bad shape more than a month after the fact."

_Don't think about broken legs—again—or a bruised spine. Don't think about the fresh scars on her face or the burns mottling her arms where she must've thrown them up defensively._

_Don't think about the emptiness in her eyes or the words, "The turian's making me uneasy."_

"But she's alive," Hackett said.

"Yes."

"And she's… you're certain it's her?"

Garrus nodded. "We'll be back in a few days. You can verify it yourself—"

"No," Hackett said. "No, you won't."

Garrus' mandibles flared before he could muffle the surprise.

"You're well-provisioned and the _Normandy_'s accustomed to—"

"You've got to be kidding me!" Garrus drove a fist into his armored thigh hard enough to hurt. He wished then he hadn't eaten, because his stomach twisted unpleasantly around the hard knot of the rations. "She's broken so you don't want her anymore?"

"That is not—"

"Tell yourself she was being a good soldier if that's what helps you sleep at night, but there are plenty of _good soldiers_ who would have balked at the things you asked of her, and this is how you repay her?"

"Vakarian—"

"You'll hold your big memorial and keep on doing things in her name? Is that it? Shunt her off to some private facility to live out the rest of her days in obscurity while the rest of the galaxy thinks she's dead?"

"Vakarian!" Hackett snapped with all the weight of an admiral's expectation of instant silence, and if Garrus were any less frayed, any less exhausted—

_Any less heartbroken._

—He'd have listened, he'd have stopped. But he couldn't. His voice rose, too loud in the confines of the QEC room, drowning out whatever Hackett was trying to say. "She's _Commander Shepard_. She's the reason any of us is alive to have this conversation, and you will not—_you will not_—dismiss her as an… an _inconvenience._"

He gripped the console, bowing his head so he wouldn't have to look the startled admiral in the face. His heart raced, pounding as hard in his chest as it did after a sprint even though he'd done nothing more strenuous than shout, and his breath came in frustrated little gasps.

"That's enough, son."

Garrus lifted his head, blinking. Instead of the admiral, his father now stood outlined in blue before him. Garrus straightened and settled his shoulders. "Dad."

"I don't think anyone's suggesting she be forgotten." His father turned his head, evidently listening to whatever Hackett was saying. He nodded. "Garrus. What have I always taught you?"

Garrus fought the instinct to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Do things right or not at all?"

His father gave a low chuckle and Garrus' rage ebbed just a little. "Fair enough. But in this case I mean 'follow the evidence.'"

"_What_ evidence?"

Even the imperfect projection of the QEC couldn't mask the very particular tilt of his dad's head and the very particular flare of his dad's mandibles. Garrus had been on the receiving end of both countless times. It was his father's patented _and now I will teach you a lesson you ought to have learned long ago_ look. "Exactly."

Garrus rubbed absently at his neck while the fingers of his other hand drummed an uneven beat against his thigh. "They've been at least a step ahead from the beginning. We've done everything according to their plans so far. They wanted us to find her."

"It stands to reason they want you to bring her back."

"So the admiral wants us to stall. Wants to see who's the most anxious when she doesn't reappear right away."

His dad didn't smile, but the lifted brow said he approved. "An old tactic, but an effective one."

Garrus felt something tight and unpleasant loosen in his chest and he took the first deep breath he'd managed since Shepard looked up at him on the _Empire_ and didn't make the smart-ass joke he was expecting. "And meanwhile the _Normandy_'s all but invisible, so if we go off the grid, they'll have a hell of a time trying to find us."

"And with the time you buy, you follow the evidence. Even the most careful criminal leaves a trace. They may have wiped their fingerprints or cleaned up the spatter, but no one's perfect. No one. And these people, whoever they are, left you the biggest clue of all."

"Her," Garrus said.

"Her," his father agreed. He glanced over his shoulder again, and cocked his head. "There's an asari here to speak with you, and the admiral's asked us to clear the room, but I… I am sorry, son. That this is the way it happened."

Garrus swallowed past the knot of emotion caught in his throat, trying not to imagine how many times his father had been forced to look into his wife's eyes only to see incomprehension or complete lack of recognition staring back. "I do need to speak to Liara, Dad, but I… do you remember Attus Klim?"

His father stilled for a moment and nodded, ever so slightly. "I do."

"I think I heard he might be on Earth. Was wondering if you could look him up."

"Of course," his dad replied. "Always was a troublemaker, Klim."

As his father stepped away from the Earth-side QEC, Garrus only hoped the leak—and didn't there have to be a leak, for Shepard's captors to have stayed abreast of the situation at every turn?—wasn't familiar enough with old C-Sec code phrases to know invoking Attus Klim meant an inside source, an informer, a _traitor, _was suspected.

A few moments later, Liara appeared, looking as tired as he felt. Still, she found a smile for him. He thought she probably meant for it to be bolstering. Instead it only seemed sad. "Garrus," she said. "It's good to see you."

"Wish I had better news."

Liara lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. "It's more than we had."

"You know what I have to do."

"Of course."

The opposite of everything he'd said aloud. The opposite of everything already spoken. He trusted Liara completely, but the traitor could be anyone else. The tech who connected the QEC calls. That chatty tech's lover. The man who washed the admiral's clothes. Any number of the faceless, nameless, practically-invisible people who kept a camp as large as the admiral's running. One of the admiral's lieutenants.

In the worst-case scenario, it could be Hackett himself.

Nothing spoken aloud was safe.

She narrowed her eyes, looking at him the way she often looked at Javik—like a puzzle, a collection of disparate facts she needed to somehow make sense of. "There's something else?"

"Yeah," he said, "you know a bit about human myths, right?"

Her lips twitched, but her expression remained grave. "A little."

"Someone mentioned a Lazarus the other day. You have any idea what that means?"

Shrugging, she crossed her arms over her chest. "Forgive me, I'm afraid I don't."

"Damn. Well. If you come across any information, knowing would really help me out."

It was vague. He hoped it was vague enough. Liara was silent a few moments before nodding her understanding. _Find Lawson._ "I'll send information along if I find it. When I find it. It may take some time. No more than a week?"

"No hurry."

_Hurry._

"Liara? You spent some time on Mars, didn't you?"

"I did. I hoped to spend more time at their Prothean site when this war was done."

He shook his head slowly. "Not a place anyone wants to visit now."

"No," she said, "I suppose not."

_We'll retrace our steps and swing back in a week. Get Lawson there if you can._

Perhaps it was the conversation, speaking in circles to keep anyone listening in from picking up the pieces, but his headache was even stronger now, throbbing behind his eyes like a claxon. He put a hand to his brow, but the pressure only reminded him there were other conversations to have, other questions to answer.

"Get some sleep, Garrus," Liara admonished. "You look exhausted."

"I will if you will."

This time, she didn't even pretend to smile.

"Yeah," he said. "That's what I thought."


	16. Stirring Dull Roots With Spring Rain

Dozing, falling in and out of a sleep not deep enough to afford dreams, not deep enough to taunt her with the cloying scent of flowers or the whispering of voices belonging to faces she could no longer bring to mind, she tried to remember.

She _needed_ to remember.

The memories were like water she tried to hold in cupped hands, though, or like sand running through her fingers. Early ones were clear. Giggling as her father threw her up, up, up into the air, always catching her. The feel of her mother's fingers braiding hair that had once been very long. Studying for exams. Aching with the desire to kiss Brandon Deluca from calculus class. The smell of fresh air and the feel of sunlight warming her cheeks.

Life.

_Blood and fire and blood and her parents and a kitchen knife stuck in an alien chest and yellow paint bubbling and peeling and skin bubbling and peeling and so much blood._

Death.

She could sift through Mindoir like she was looking at photographs, at holos, at clips of vids. After that, things got murkier, harder to grasp, less like vids and more like single frames flashing before vanishing into darkness again. Shards of a whole. As soon as she caught hold of a fragment—laughing with cards in her hands; the echo of music she thought belonged to a tango; the heavy weight of something cool and metallic in her hand as a child's voice murmured _choose, choose, choose_—it twisted away again, indistinct, cutting her to ribbons, leaving her somehow even more exhausted and sore.

She didn't want to dream, but she couldn't make sense of the waking world, either.

Instead she lay, eyes closed, listening to the doctor move around the medbay. Sometimes the doctor spoke to herself under her breath, the warm voice somehow soothing even when it wasn't directed at her. Periodically, the light scent of perfume—nothing with roses or gardenias, thank God—indicated the doctor was nearby, but she didn't intrude and didn't disturb.

She wondered if it was to give her peace and quiet, or because she was a hopeless case.

She was considering opening her eyes and asking some questions without answers—_who am I? How much have I lost? Will I ever get it back?_—when she heard the door open. Except for the turian, the doctor had shooed away any attempted visitors. This time, however, she did not.

"Ahh," she said, "I did wonder when you'd be by. You'll be happy to know the tissue's coming along quite well. How are you feeling? Making yourself at home?"

She took a few deep breaths, long and slow and steadying, waiting to see if the turian would be the one to answer the doctor's inquiries. When the responding voice, however, was a woman's, she let her eyes drift open, and turned her head.

The newcomer was also a turian, though she was confined to a wheelchair and a quick glance showed one leg amputated at the knee. Her own leg, broken and still recovering but whole, gave a sympathetic twinge at the sight. Like the other—like Garrus, this turian's face was marked with blue, sweeping gracefully beneath her eyes, across her nose, down her mandibles. Her face wasn't scarred, though, and when she spoke, her voice didn't sound like broken glass.

"Meant to come sooner, only I got caught up with something down in the armory. Lost track of the time." The turian waved, a broad gesture encompassing the rest of the medbay. "And how's your other patient doing? I haven't seen Garrus to ask; I still can't believe he found—"

"She's awake," the doctor interrupted, not unkindly, smiling a little smile likely meant to be reassuring. "Best not say anything you wouldn't like overheard by a captive audience."

The turian woman had a nice laugh, and she wheeled her chair closer. She wasn't sure if it was the chair, or the relative slightness, or the distinct lack of heavy armor and spiked head fringe, but the turian in the chair wasn't nearly as frightening as the other.

The laughter probably helped. The other turian certainly didn't seem like the laughing type.

"Sorry," she said, as blithely as she could. She didn't think she was fooling anyone. "I'm afraid I don't remember you."

"You wouldn't," the turian said, evidently a little confused. "We've never met. I'm Solana. Solana Vakarian."

A faint smile pulled at her lips as understanding dawned. At least the blue markings made sense. "You're his—Garrus'—wife? Mate? Uh. Sorry. I don't know the terminology you prefer."

Instead of more laughter, Solana brought a hand up to cover her mouth, her mandibles flaring wide. She wondered what that meant. She didn't need translation to read the sadness in the turian woman's amber eyes, though, or in the sound of her voice when she whispered, "Oh. Oh, Spirits, no."

"I-I didn't mean to offend—"

"I'm not offended," Solana said. "I just… didn't realize. Garrus is my brother." Without pulling away, she twisted in her chair enough to look back at the doctor, "Is he—"

"Coping," the doctor said. "I am not entirely convinced he's doing it well. He needs to sleep, and he needs to eat, and he needs to stop ignoring my insistence that he do both of these things sooner rather than later."

"Right. I know what his brand of coping looks like." Solana took a deep breath, releasing it on a sigh. "This. _This_ of all possible things." Turning her attention away from the doctor, she said, "Forgive me, I've been terribly rude. I wish the circumstances were better, but I am very happy to finally meet you… Commander?"

Hesitation raised the final word into a question, and it was somehow gratifying to find someone else as uncertain about what to call her as she found herself. "So I'm told," she said with a forced lightness she absolutely did not feel.

Solana didn't flinch. She only folded her hands in her lap and tilted her head slightly, saying, "Would you prefer I call you something else?"

She felt the embarrassing prickle of tears in her eyes and turned her head to hide them.

Gently, so softly she knew the words were meant only for her, Solana said, "It's all right if you don't know."

When she considered the name her parents had given her, she didn't think of her laughing childhood or her singing father or her mother who loved gardening and gave the best hugs. She remembered being young and stupid and helpless, sitting in a tree while her world burned down, clutching a screwdriver because it was the only weapon she'd thought to grab. She remembered being shipped off to a family she did not know, who did not know her, who'd kept her in a pretty white room in a pretty white house dressed in pretty white clothes, trapped like a bird in a pretty white cage. None of that was right. None of that was _her._

"Can I have a mirror?"

Solana nodded at once, but she didn't miss the way the doctor paled. "Are you entirely certain that's—"

Solana wheeled herself to the counter and poked through the items there until the doctor finally helped her by opening a drawer and pulling out a small square of glass. Setting it on her lap, Solana returned to the bed and held it out. Her hand didn't shake and her gaze was clear and unfaltering.

She appreciated that. Her own hand did quaver a little as it closed around the edge of the mirror, and she found she couldn't immediately lift it even though she wanted very much to know what it would reveal.

She knew the litany of her injuries: broken legs and bruised spine and cracked ribs; fractured collarbone, burns on her arms, countless lacerations. Head trauma. Amnesia. Some she'd figured out for herself, others she'd overheard the doctor discussing with the tu—with Garrus. Most were healing. The doctor seemed somehow surprised they'd not healed more quickly, more thoroughly. Her left arm wasn't her dominant one, but it was as whole and healthy as could be expected, and was certainly strong enough to lift a mirror.

She inhaled deeply enough to pain her healing ribs, and then she raised the glass.

The scar bisecting her left eyebrow was missing—that was what she noticed first. The one she'd gotten from falling out of a tree when she was seven and intent on disobeying every rule her parents ever laid out. She'd spent most of her teenaged life doing every damned thing she could think of to cover up that scar. Makeup. Bangs. She frowned, bringing her eyebrows together, and the reflection, with her unscarred brow, frowned back.

"The scars and burns will heal—" the doctor began, only to be quieted by an insistent sound from Solana.

She ignored them both. The eyes were the same, big and deceptively guileless, grey with a hint of green, like her mother's. She had her father's straight nose and full lips, though in her memories her father's lips almost always smiled. These were concrete things, things she remembered the way she remembered the missing scar. Her hair fell past her shoulders, and somehow this struck her as both too long and not long enough. Puzzling. Then again, given the reddish burn scarring on the right side of her face and neck, she supposed she was glad to have hair at all.

"I look older," she said, unable to contain her own surprise.

Her collarbone protested, but she brought her right hand up to touch the faint lines at the corner of her eye. Drifting down, she pressed on her cheekbone, relishing the slight ache of it. She traced her unbroken left eyebrow. Her right was the one that would have the scar now; a mostly-healed pink line crossed the very end and ran down her temple, stopping just before her ear. She didn't remember it, but she must have turned her head that way, bringing up her arms too late to completely protect herself from whatever had done the damage.

_Your time is at an end. You must decide._

Did she remember fire? Or was she only filling in a blank with the most obvious choice?

_Let's get this over with._

She brought her fingers to her mouth and slowly, very slowly, pulled her lips into the semblance of a smile. It didn't touch her still-moist eyes, but it was a smile nevertheless.

She almost thought she recognized herself with a smile. Even if it wasn't quite real.

Lifting her eyes away from the glass and its reflection, she found Solana still sitting patiently beside her, gaze steady but undemanding.

"Shepard," she said, and meant it. _Shepard._ The word still held weight she couldn't quite carry, but it was better than the nameless, hollow feeling that had been sitting in her belly like a stone since she woke up. _Shepard. _"I'm Shepard."

Solana's mandibles twitched again, but differently. Shepard thought this was the turian equivalent of a smile, perhaps, and found her own smile growing wider. She didn't lift the mirror again, but she imagined this expression must, at last, brighten her eyes.

With the same unhurried calm, Solana asked, "What do you remember? What's the last really clear thing?"

"I—my eighteenth birthday, I think."

The doctor sucked in a startled gasp of an inhale.

"It was—" Shepard began, only to be interrupted by the doctor saying, "Your eighteenth birthday was the day you enlisted. Perhaps that makes—"

"Enlisted?" Shepard shook her head a bit too vigorously and her aching neck protested. "Enlisted, no. I—there was a party. I danced until dawn. I couldn't breathe."

The doctor turned away too quickly for Shepard to catch her expression, but she didn't think it was a good one. She thought about the marriage of familiar and unfamiliar she'd seen in her own reflection, the lines at the corners of her eyes, and the drawn cheeks, and the permanent furrow between her wrongly-scarred brows.

"How old are you now?" Solana asked.

Shepard blinked, her eyes burning. Her hands closed into fists. "I have no idea."

Solana leaned forward and laid gentle fingers on the back of Shepard's hand until she relaxed her vicious hold on the bedsheets. "It's okay," she said. "Something is better than nothing. We can always work with something."

Her fingers twitched again, but the hand on hers reminded her to breathe. "How can you sound so sure?"

"My mom," Solana explained. "She… there's a turian disease. Affects memory. I… was with her a lot. Had a lot of practice helping her try to find things she'd lost. Sometimes it even worked."

"Corpalis," Shepard blurted, before she could catch the word and swallow it. A flush heated her cheeks. "I don't know where that came from—he never even told me."

"He?" Solana asked, brow plates lifting. It mightn't have been a human face or a human expression, but Shepard recognized genuine surprise.

Shepard closed her eyes, though she couldn't have said what, exactly, she was hiding from. "I don't know. I don't know why I said that."

"Something is better than nothing," Solana repeated, and, strangely enough, Shepard almost found herself believing it.


	17. Stumbling in Cracked Earth

All things considered, the crew did well taking things in stride.

Then again, Garrus thought as he looked around the lounge, it was entirely possible he was just dealing with shipwide shock. A pall hung over the room, almost heavy enough to touch, certainly heavy enough to bend necks and round shoulders beneath it. Though several people had poured drinks, the glasses remained mostly untouched. Every once in a while someone would lift a tumbler, almost drink from it, and then stop, as if remembering how inappropriate celebration was. Or like they feared what it might mean if they started drowning sorrows now.

If anything was sadder than a roomful of warriors with nothing to fight, he didn't know what. They were all damned heroes several times over, and none of them had the first idea how to deal with something like _this_, this middle ground of not quite victory and not quite defeat.

Not that he blamed them.

Oh, they'd done the impossible. They'd found their commander, but it certainly wasn't the glorious reunion they—he'd—imagined. Shepard wasn't with them, teasing Grunt about his dinosaurs or insisting Javik stay for just one drink, or messing up Alenko's hair every time his back was turned. If she were here, the room would have been ringing with conversation and laughter and the awful music she always chose. She'd have thrown back the pall with the force of her optimism, just like always.

_I'm not supposed to be here._

"So we're just gonna… what?" Jack asked without vitriol, staring at her palms. "Sit and wait and cross our fucking fingers?"

"No," Garrus replied. "We might not know what's going on, but _something_ is. Shepard didn't get out here by herself."

"Are they the ones responsible for her… memory?" Tali asked. Curled up in the corner of the couch, she didn't even pretend to drink. "Or could they have been trying to help without… well, without all the attention?"

"I sure as hell don't think dragging her halfway across the system in a makeshift treatment facility indicates they had her best interests in mind."

Tali inclined her head, but he couldn't quite decide if it was because she agreed with him. "Do you think it's something that can be undone?"

He retreated behind the armor of medicine he didn't understand to keep the seething worries at bay. "Dr. Chakwas doesn't know the extent of what's lost, or whether the damage is reversible. Yet. We—she—wanted to wait, wanted to let Shepard recover a bit before she started pressing. We don't want to make things worse."

_The turian's making me uneasy._

"Can you not use something like the Echo Shard?" Javik leaned against the wall, rubbing his hands together absently, as though he wished instead to be washing them. "The memory will be preserved. You may put back what was taken."

"Maybe if we had anything resembling that technology," Garrus said, trying and mostly failing to keep the bitterness from his tone. "But we don't."

"Primitives," he muttered, but, like Jack, the rancor was missing. If it were anyone but Javik, Garrus would have said he sounded mournful.

"Okeer's imprinting?" Grunt asked. "If we collected enough of who she was…"

"We'd have to recreate whatever it was Okeer did." Garrus shrugged. "He didn't leave much behind, except you. Even if we had access to his research, or his facilities, we know he was using Collector tech we just don't have access to. And we sure as hell don't have room for the margin of error he had. One homicidal not-quite-Shepard clone was enough to last a lifetime."

Kaidan, standing at the window and silent until now, turned to face them, his expression somehow both pensive and hopeful. "Well, what about Liara? She… back with the beacon, she joined with Shepard's mind. Hell, she did it twice. Isn't that a little like Javik's shard? Shepard's memories collected and sifted through and presumably still taking up space in Liara's head?"

"Maybe," Garrus said. "She didn't… she didn't mention it, so if she thinks it's even possible, it's probably enough of a long shot that she didn't want to get my—our—hopes up. And since we're not headed back to Earth right away, it's a backup plan at best."

Zaeed filled his glass three-quarters full of some liquid that smelled worse than ryncol and tossed it back in a gulp. His face twisted in a brief expression of disgust, but evidently not enough to stop him from going for a refill. "You considered what kind of shitstorm'll go down the first time she looks herself up on the goddamn extranet?"

Garrus scrubbed a hand over his face and nodded. "Until she finds out exactly where the gaps are, Dr. Chakwas wants to keep her… isolated."

"What, a prisoner?" Jack asked. "Fuck, no. Is this the bullshit reason behind why none of us have been allowed to see her?"

Garrus was spared having to answer by Kaidan saying, "No, I think I understand. Massani's not wrong. Until we know what the problem is, we run the risk of making things worse by giving her more information than she can handle. Or worse, conflicting information." He ran both hands through his hair, holding his head for a moment, and Garrus wondered if Kaidan was carrying around a monster of a headache too. Seemed likely. Still, he wouldn't have wished it on anyone. "For the first time in years, we don't have a potentially-galaxy-ending menace breathing down our necks. We have the luxury of time. We don't need to push her to be better before she's ready. We don't need to take risks."

Garrus didn't think he was imagining the way Kaidan's eyes found his on this.

"But we're going to find the bastards who left her alone on a ship in the middle of nowhere, and who thought running with her was a better idea than turning her into proper authorities when she was found," Garrus said, tamping down on the quaver in his subvocals. "We're going to follow Dr. Chakwas' recommendations—which currently means no visitors—and we're going to go over the _Empire_ like it's a crime scene, inch by inch. Tali, I want you to—"

"Go through the ship's computers and see what traces I can find?"

"They'll be wiped."

She snorted. "When has that stopped me? I'll find something."

Garrus nodded. "Good." He inhaled deeply, ignoring the pain still throbbing behind his eyes. "I—look, I get that combing for microscopic clues that may not even be there isn't what most of you signed up for, but I could use the help. We've got a day here, maybe two, and then we've got to head to the rendezvous back at Mars."

His words didn't help with the atmosphere, and he thought Kaidan actually looked a little ill, but when he added, "I wouldn't ask anyone to go back there if it wasn't going to be worth it," they almost looked like they believed him.

#

Because she hadn't been in the lounge with the rest of the crew, Garrus went looking for his sister. He skirted the medbay, peering through the bank of windows long enough to make sure she wasn't within.

Shepard, of course, was. She was even awake, sitting mostly upright, once again reading a book. He watched until she flipped a page, never once looking up, and then he turned and walked away again.

He waited for the voice in his head to make some sideways little comment, but it remained silent.

It was probably a bad sign that he was disappointed.

Solana he found in Liara's old room—the room she'd more or less commandeered because it involved no stairs and was large enough to maneuver her chair around—staring into a glass of the absolutely horrible brandy Shepard had managed to apologetically scrounge for him on one of those last Citadel runs. The bottle sat at Solana's elbow, mostly-full, exactly how he'd left it after the one or two ill-advised glasses he'd drunk in the early days when the _Normandy_ was still stranded and he was desperate for some kind of relief, even if it was illusory.

He imagined he'd looked then a great deal like his sister looked now.

"I was prepared to dislike her, you know," Solana said without preamble, holding the glass to the light but not raising it to her mouth. The liquid cast blue shadows against her silvery plates. Above her, several of Liara's remaining screens showed different material: AI research, information about EDI, reports—all old—about Palaven. And notes about treatment of memory loss. "If not dislike, disapprove, at least. More like Dad than I ever realized, I guess. Even when I knew it was important, I couldn't quite forgive her for pulling you so effectively into her orbit and out of ours."

"It was never like—"

She shook her head and he swallowed his words. "When I first… when Mom's condition was diagnosed, and we knew there was no more pretending it was just a bad day or a bad week or something that would resolve itself, I ran. As far away and as fast as I could. I buried myself in work, in drink and drugs and instant gratification wherever I could find it. I took stupid risks. It probably looked like I had a death wish. Maybe I did." Solana glanced at him over the rim of her glass. Her expression held no accusation, but it wasn't quite a comfortable one, either. "And always, there was Naxus. He was my best friend. In the beginning, he was my shoulder to lean on. Later, his was the voice of reason in a world gone totally unreasonable. I was standing on the edge of the precipice, about to jump, and he… he didn't try to save me, or to stop me, but he was there. He put out a hand and never flinched, no matter how hard I made it for him. And trust me, I made it hard. Eventually, I reached out and took it."

"Sol, he's… he's a fighter. He'll be there when you get back to Palaven—"

"Don't you dare, Garrus. Don't you _dare_ make promises you can't keep. I don't want platitudes any more than you do." She didn't raise her voice, but then, she didn't have to. Her subharmonics told him plenty. Instead, she took a deep breath and brought the still-untouched glass to the desk in front of her. Then she folded her hands in her lap. She didn't look at him. "But you mistake my meaning. This isn't about him. Or about me. This is about her. And it's about you."

She gestured vaguely at the bottle. "Do you want some of this?"

The grating undercurrent of despair stole the humor somewhat as he replied, "Obviously you haven't tried it."

"I don't drink when I'm angry, or sad, or frustrated," Solana explained, pushing her glass away with the tip of one talon. It slid a few inches, liquid sloshing up over the rim. "Because if I drink when I'm angry, or sad, or frustrated, I feel better. And then I don't want to stop. In the end, I feel worse. You know. You saw me once at the end of a long, long downward spiral. Yours was the hand that night. Even though I cursed you for it."

"So why do you have a glass full of liquor in front of you?"

"Because I want to drink it. I've never wanted anything quite as much as I want this bottle to be empty." She sighed. "But this isn't about that, either. You weren't happy. You weren't satisfied. You were doing what Dad wanted you to do, and you were miserable, and we all pretended not to see it because it was better that way. The Vakarian family motto, I told you once, right? If you don't like it, ignore it and hope it goes away."

"Or keep getting written up for breaking rules and doing things your own way instead of C-Sec's, yeah. Because nothing says rebellion like annoying your father with beaurocratic nightmares."

"For years, that's who I thought you were. A cocky asshole who needed to do things his way to prove a point—"

"To be fair—"

"Shut up, Garrus, and let me finish. The you who came to Palaven was different. The you who rallied the troops and did his damnedest to prepare people who didn't want to be prepared? He was different. And even now, beneath this burden of grief, you're that different man. Stronger. Less posturing. More sure." Solana raised her eyes to his, and her gaze was so intense he almost had to look away. He didn't. It hurt. "She didn't take you away from us. She helped you find yourself. She was your hand, wasn't she? Like Naxus was mine?"

Garrus flinched, just a little. Just enough. "She's _scared_ of me. She… said I made her uneasy."

Solana snorted a harsh, hard little laugh. "Spirits, G, can you blame her?"

He blinked, his mandibles flicking wide in startled dismay. Solana leaned forward, planting one elbow on the desk, gesturing with the other hand to take him in. "You've got, what? Almost a foot on her? And that armor's very good for making you twice your size and menacing, but it's not exactly benign. You've looked perpetually murderous since Earth, and I know you'd only lie if I asked the last time you slept a night through. Exhausted and angry aren't a friendly look on you. Damn right you're terrifying. You're making _me_ uneasy, and I'm your sister."

He opened his mouth, but the words wouldn't come. He had to swallow three times to moisten his parched throat. He thought about taking a swig of the awful brandy just to give him his voice back, but knew it wasn't worth it. "She's hurt. She's… I don't want to make things worse."

"Hold out your hand, G. Wait for her to take it." As to prove her point, Solana reached out and gave the hand hanging limp at his side a squeeze. "Most of the time Mom was sick, she didn't know who I was, but she still reached for my hand when I offered it." Lifting the hand she still held, she brought it to her cheek in a brief nuzzle. "But _please_, Garrus, go get some sleep. This chair puts me at such an inconvenient height for trying to knock you out. And I'm pretty sure the doctor's walking around with a syringe full of turian sedative, just waiting for her moment."

He chuckled, and then, more seriously, jerked his chin in the direction of the bottle. "You want me to take that with me?"

Solana shook her head. "I'll be fine. We have to do this, every once in a while. So I remember what I'm fighting for."

He understood, so he didn't protest. He merely dropped his brow to hers and whispered a quiet goodnight.

Garrus considered visiting the medbay as Solana's door closed behind him, but instead he headed for the elevator. In his quarters, he rifled through Shepard's desk, uncovering a broken datapad, several out-of-date omni-tools, and something that had probably once been a model ship, though he had no idea what make it was meant to be. Something Shepard didn't like; it was in barely recognizable pieces. Shoved into the bottom drawer, its cover bent, he found a single paper book.

He made it as far as the door before he remembered Solana's words. Swiftly, before he could second-guess himself, he replaced his armor with a set of civvies. The black and white ones; she—she'd liked those. Before. Pushing away memories he didn't have time to relive, he headed for the medbay once again.

Chakwas looked up when he entered, an argument already on her lips. "Won't be here long," he said. In his peripheral vision, he saw Shepard tense. Slowly, he crossed the room, stopping when he was just close enough to hold out his offering. Her brows dipped in a peculiar little frown, more puzzled than frightened.

"For when you finish that one," Garrus said. She reached out and took the book from his hand, and if she was careful not to actually touch him, he pretended not to notice.

It was worth it for the smile. For a moment, her face lit up, bright and unguarded and _happy_. "Oh," she said, bringing the book close to her chest in the rough approximation of a hug, "_The Odyssey. _I love this book. I read it over and over after Mindoir, always dreaming I'd somehow set sail for home again, even though I knew home wasn't there anymore, and wasn't ever going to be the same." Her smile tipped sideways, crookedly amused. "I had a hamster named Odysseus once. Do you know hamsters? Fuzzy little rodents. Totally useless. Never could get him to stop hiding whenever I came too close. Loved the little bastard anyway."

"What happened to him?"

She shrugged, the smile disappearing into discomfort. "I… don't know. What a surprise."

Garrus smiled the gentlest smile he knew how to give, and Shepard didn't flinch. "Then maybe he's on his way home."

"He's probably dead," Shepard said. But then she raised her chin and some of the brightness returned to her features and she smiled again. "But I think I like your version better. Thank you. Uh. Garrus."

He inclined his head.

And then he bid her goodnight, and instead of pacing the ship or walking more rounds or checking the main battery, he retreated to his room, dropped an extra helping of food into Odysseus' cage, and he slept.


	18. Hold on Tight

A full complement waited for him when Garrus made his way to the mess the next morning, most silently nursing their energizing beverages of choice and picking at uninspiring breakfast rations. He knew better than to speak to any of them this early. Kaidan nodded a greeting, and Jack glowered—practically a cheery hello, from that quarter. Javik, whom Garrus had never actually seen eat, sat alone, arms folded and eyes closed. Grunt, at the next table, looked a little like he wanted to take advantage of the situation, but Garrus glared and he subsided. Zaeed was the only one talking, regaling Cortez and Traynor with _everyone died but me_ war stories. Traynor looked horrified, and Cortez a little like he was taking notes.

Garrus spared a thought for how wrong it was that they'd all seemed cheerier when desperately trying to save the galaxy on missions deemed all-but-suicidal, but at least the pall of the day before was no longer quite so heavy.

He swung through the galley, liberating a handful of dextro ration bars, and by the time he turned back to the tables Tali had already shifted down so he could sit next to her.

He gestured toward Solana's room. "Have you seen my sister yet this morning?"

Tali leaned forward, propping her head against one hand. "Funny you should ask. She's in the medbay. You know, where none of the rest of us have been allowed to go."

Garrus shook his head, unwrapping a bar and waving in the direction of his own legs. "Making sure she had someone competent looking after her was about eighty percent of the reason I wanted her to come along."

"And the other twenty?"

Garrus saw Solana going head to head with the bottle of turian brandy and said, "Is there anything worse than a skilled person being treated like they're no longer valuable because of something irrelevant and out of their control?" He swallowed half the bar in one bite and grimaced at the taste. "Come on, Tali. Use her. If nothing else, she's turian. She'll take orders."

Tali chuckled. "As well as you do?"

"She's a _good_ turian."

Pushing the second ration bar toward him, Tali said, "Nice try. Shepard said she saw generals saluting you."

"Pretty sure the Reaper Advisor position's been made redundant."

Tali didn't say anything right away, merely nodding and leaning on her forearms. He ate the rations and contemplated a third bar. Finally, just as he was about to rise and call things to order, Tali reached out and stopped him with a touch. "I don't know anything about being a turian," she said, "but you're good at what you do. People listen to you. People are willing to _follow_ you. And no, before you argue, it's not just because of Shepard. I know it. Keelah, Shepard knows it; she's spoken to me about it. If your people don't see the value in that, they need to rethink what they value."

Garrus tried not to remember Victus saying _if I was the best they had left on Menae, you can't be more than a couple of steps away from my place_, but his subharmonics were strained instead of amused when he replied,"You're only saying that because you like me."

"Ha. I put up with you."

Garrus' mandibles flicked into a brief smile, but his words were serious. "Then put up with my sister. For my sake, if nothing else."

The cant of Tali's mask definitely equated a scowl, but her voice held a hint of laughter when she said, "Fine. But if she touches my drive core—"

"I'll let you do what I'd do to her if she messed with the Thanix."

"Acceptable." Tali sighed, rolling her shoulders. "Shepard's made politicians of all of us, Garrus. Trust me, they're not letting you go anywhere. Doesn't mean it has to be a prison sentence."

Garrus shook his head and pocketed the third bar of rations for later. "The fact that I think it _does_ is what makes me a bad turian."

#

Tali and Traynor set to work scouring the ship's computer and disabling the various still-functioning sensor-jamming devices. Grunt and Zaeed he assigned to tethered extravehicular activity, on the off chance any hastily ejected material remained in the vicinity. Javik, Kaidan, and Jack went to scour the rest of the _Empire_. They'd done a relatively thorough search when looking for Shepard in the first place, but Javik, Garrus hoped, might be able to pick up something—anything—about the people who'd taken her by the traces they left behind.

Wishing he were accompanied by a team of crime scene techs, Garrus returned to the room where they'd found Shepard. He'd told Kaidan to bring Javik later, when he was finished, but this part he wanted to do alone. He stood in the doorway a long time, surveying the scene. They'd left enough behind here to keep up the ruse of habitation, doubtless for Shepard's benefit. He imagined the cabinets would be empty, and the lack of desk or chairs or caregiver's bed was telling.

Shepard's bed remained, of course. The sheets were still rumpled where she'd lain, and the skeletons of equipment, now dark and quiet, loomed on the fringes like eerie guards.

He spared a moment to regret how thoroughly they'd tampered with the scene in the process of removing Shepard from it, and then he snorted. If nothing else, any inadmissible evidence could be submitted by Alenko, with the door-opening stamp of Spectre approval.

"First you have to figure out what the crime is," Garrus said aloud, his voice echoing strangely in the silent room. "And you have to apprehend a perpetrator."

_Irony in action_, he thought with a touch of bitterness. He was more than happy to follow C-Sec protocol on this one, down to the letter. He just didn't think it would reveal enough.

If his father were here, he knew exactly what he'd say: _it reveals plenty, son. You're dealing with people who knew how to get away clean. Don't let them._

_Easier said than done_, Garrus thought, flicking the audio on his visor to music just distracting enough to keep his thoughts on the scene in front of him and not on all the things still ahead.

The room had no windows, of course, and the vent access revealed nothing out of the ordinary. He ran scans on every device. The cabinets, contrary to his belief, held medical supplies, though nothing to indicate where they'd been purchased or stolen from. Opening a carton of syringes, he scowled when he noticed how many of the original quantity were missing, and made a note to speak with Chakwas about it.

When he searched the bed, running his gloved hands carefully over the sheets, he found several of Shepard's red hairs trapped on the pillow. He nearly crowed when he lifted that pillow and found a single dark hair, long and human and definitely not Shepard's, beneath it.

He was just lowering it into a sealed container when an incoming communication dimmed his music and Joker's voice said, "You need to get back here."

"Can it wait, Joker? I'm in the middle of—"

He hadn't recognized the desperation for what it was when the pilot first spoke, but there was no mistaking it now. "Garrus. You need to get back here. _Now_."

He was already up and running before he replied, "Is it Shepard?"

"The doc's locked down the medbay. Shepard's having some kind of—fuck, I don't even know. Seizure? I can hear her screaming over the comms."

"Patch me through."

"You don't want to—"

"Patch me through now, Joker, and tell everyone else to back the hell away."

Garrus had seen Shepard angry; he'd seen her grieving; he'd seen her on the brink of what she'd truly believed would be her death, and yet he had never, _never_ heard her sound so terrified, so upset, so out of her mind. He could barely make out her words, and the jamming technology Tali and Traynor evidently hadn't finished disabling was still causing the reception to cut out as he moved, but the quality of Shepard's voice was enough to speed his steps. Kaidan called out after him as he barreled toward the airlock door, but he didn't pause.

"—Won't… not your… won't let you—not again—"

He cursed Cerberus' removal of the easier-access stairs between the CIC and crew decks as he waited for the elevator.

"—Not my doctor," Shepard shouted. "I know my doctors and you're not one of them. Get me out of here! Get me away from here! This isn't right. _This isn't right._ I don't belong here. _I'm not supposed to be here!_" Her voice changed. Dropped. Shifted until she sounded strangely young. "Where… where are my parents? Don't come any closer! I want to see my parents. Wait. That's… that's not…"

The red barrier of the door's lock thwarted his first two attempts to hack it, and he was thinking about resorting to a mine when the mechanism chirped and the light flickered green.

Shepard turned to face him as soon as the door opened, and as she did, Chakwas, one arm hanging limp and blood streaming from an obviously broken nose, moved toward her again.

_Come on, Shepard. You gotta watch your six if I'm not there. You know that._

"Stop," he ordered. Chakwas froze. Shepard spat, and snarled, "You're not touching me. None of you are—" Mid-sentence, she went completely rigid, her eyes rolling back in her head. The keening scream torn from her throat turned his blood to ice, but he forced himself to move, to cross the room in several long strides. Shepard clutched a syringe in one hand, her knuckles white around it. As he arrived at her bedside, the seizure ended, leaving Shepard limp and sweating against her pillows. A smear of blood marked her brow, starkly red against her skin's unnatural paleness.

"What the hell—"

"I was just going to give her painkillers," Chakwas explained, her swollen nose stealing the usual crispness from her accent. "She kept crying out and shifting in her sleep, and I—"

"The syringe?"

Chakwas nodded and then winced. "Painkillers, as I said. She went limp. I thought she was—and then she grabbed my wrist. Shattered it. Near-ripped the shoulder from the socket. Head-butted me. She shouldn't have been able to—before she could do more, she began seizing, as you witnessed. It lasted only a few moments, and when she came to she grabbed the syringe I'd dropped. I couldn't get near. You… you heard. This is not merely amnesia borne of a trauma, Garrus. It cannot be."

Shepard's eyelids fluttered, and she turned her head, groaning. A bead of blood welled on her split bottom lip.

"Make it stop," she begged. "Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it end." Her eyes found his, damp and so wide the bloodshot whites were visible around the entirety of her iris. "Garrus." She said his name like she knew it, and the faint clink of the syringe as it dropped from her hand seemed too loud. With the hand that had held it, she reached for him, closing her fingers tightly around his. "Garrus, please. This isn't living. Make it stop. Make it—" Another scream stole her words and her back arched until he heard the bones creak. Her hand still held his, and he could feel the pressure of the seizure trying to break his fingers.

"Her bones," Chakwas breathed, almost too quietly for him to hear over Shepard's wail. "Of course they don't heal. They break over and over again. Oh, God. Oh, God, what have they done to her?"

Garrus ignored the doctor. When the attack ended, he bent close. Shepard didn't flinch or pull away, her eyes locked on his. Her tongue darted out to drag the bead of blood from her lips; another took its place. "Shepard," he said, "who did this to you?"

"Please, don't make me go back." Tears spilled from her eyes and down her cheeks. Garrus didn't think she realized she was crying. Her voice was impossibly rough, impossibly hoarse. Her fingers gripped his hand impossibly hard. "I don't know what's real when I'm there, Garrus, I don't know what's—"

But she hadn't been watching her six. She'd been watching him. And he'd been watching her. Before she could finish her plea, her eyes slid shut as the drugs Chakwas had slipped into her IV pulled her under.

Furious, his head throbbing with rage so sudden and intense it made the edges of his vision black, he snarled, "_Why?_ You heard her! What the fuck are you—"

Chakwas lifted her chin and didn't balk, interrupting, "Her heart couldn't take it. Listen to the machines, Garrus. She's one seizure away from heart failure."

He didn't have to be a doctor to recognize the danger his visor was warning him of. Even now, as the drugs took hold, Shepard's vitals were off the charts. If she'd been anyone but Shepard, her heart would have given out already.

In her induced sleep, Shepard's hand still held his, her fingers twitching as she fought whatever shadows it was her dreams threw against her.

"She recognized me."

"And she will again." Chakwas closed her eyes, and this time her cheeks were the ones streaked with the thin tracks of tears. "Forgive me, Garrus. I know—"

"No," he replied, anger gone as suddenly as it had come, leaving him scraped out, hollow and numb. "You did the right thing. Of course you did."

Shepard murmured something, and her brow creased. He ran the thumb of his free hand across the heavy furrow, smoothing it out and wiping away the blood smear left by Chakwas' broken nose in the same gesture.

_Forgive the insubordination_, he thought, breathing deeply to still the pounding of his own heart. _Your boyfriend has an order for you._

She turned into the pressure of his hand, but did not come back to him.


	19. Each In His Prison

By the time Shepard's vitals had crept back into the deep, regular pattern of medically-induced sleep, a crowd had gathered in the mess. Garrus could hear them talking amongst themselves, even though they were trying to be quiet. Sure enough, when he exited the medbay, a dozen faces swung around to look at him. Almost the entire ground team had returned. Cortez, Traynor, and a couple of the other Alliance crew huddled at one table. Breather helmets tossed aside, Zaeed and Grunt still wore their EVA-gear. Even Joker had come down from the cockpit and was sitting next to Solana, staring hard at the backs of his hands.

The careful steadiness with which Solana watched him spoke of concern, tinged with insight he wished she didn't have. Garrus wanted to look away, but did not. He flicked his mandibles ever so slightly—Shepard might have known it was a warning, but he didn't think anyone else was familiar enough with the subtleties of turian expressions to pick up on it. Refusing to back down, Solana held his gaze just long enough to border on insolent before dipping her head. The apprehension did not quite disappear, but she held her tongue. For now.

Javik, Garrus noted, was the only one missing. He wondered if it was a good sign or a very bad one.

Kaidan rose as soon as Garrus' glance slid his way. "I know you've got some field-medic training," Garrus said. "Chakwas needs her wrist splinted. She doesn't think she has a concussion; I'm not so sure. She'll fill you in."

Garrus didn't wait for him to leave before sweeping his gaze across all the assembled faces. "What did you find?"

"Nothing," Grunt muttered. "Not even a block of compacted trash."

Garrus nodded, having expected as much, and yet was still unable to halt the swell of disappointment.

"Sam and I are making progress," Tali offered. "We've disabled all the jamming tech, and we recovered several packets of encrypted data."

"I think they might be messages," Traynor added. Normally something like this would have made her excited, but Garrus heard only weariness in her voice, and worry. Her eyes kept flicking past him to rest on the bank of medbay windows beyond. "I'll know more when we've broken the encryption. And we're still looking for more. They were thorough, but not… not thorough enough."

Disappointment was replaced by a flood of hope. And something darker; colder. After witnessing what he'd witnessed with Shepard, a headshot from a distance seemed too kind a fate.

He didn't need the Shepard-voice in his head to broadcast her disapproval; he knew exactly what it would look like, sound like. He'd seen it before. Hell, he'd give his left arm to be seeing it again right now.

_Talk to me when it sounds like bones breaking over and over and over again_, he thought at the absent voice. _Talk to me when it sounds like the voice of the woman you love pleading to die. This isn't Sidonis, Shepard. Not even close._

Aloud, he said none of this. "Good work. Where's Javik? Did he—"

"Went to his room," Jack interrupted. "We found fuck all when we looked around, but then he nearly lost his fucking mind when we went into Shepard's—the room where we found Shepard." She leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest and giving Garrus the kind of defiant glare that usually preceded some kind of explosive act of biotics. "You gonna tell us what the hell happened in there?"

_Garrus. Garrus, please._

_She recognized me._

"She had some kind of a seizure—"

"Some kind?" Joker snapped, eyes flashing beneath the brim of his hat as he raised his head. His beard had grown unkempt, but did little to hide the gauntness of his cheeks. "It sounded like she was being _tortured._ And not nice, mild, batarian prison camp type torture, either, oh no."

"You think I know more than you do?" Garrus swept his hand back, gesturing at the medbay without looking at it. "You think that was easier for me to hear than it was for you?"

Joker's hands clenched into fists. "It's not _your_ fault she is where she is, though. It's mine."

Garrus sucked in a surprised little breath. Tali murmured, "Keelah," under her breath and reached out, but Joker jerked his hands away before she could comfort him.

"Twice," Joker said, his voice breaking on the word. "First time I should've followed a good order. Second time I should've ignored a bad. Doesn't matter though, does it? It's on me, but she's the one who pays the price."

_Make it end._

"Joker—"

"We could've been on the ground, looking for her," the pilot insisted, walking the edge of hysteria. All around them, people began to speak to each other in low, worried voices. "We could've got to her first instead of wasting almost a month in that goddamned jungle. These assholes would never have touched her."

"No," Garrus said, and the faint murmuring of people talking amongst themselves stilled into silence so absolute it was only broken by the hum of the ship and the barely audible rise and fall of the voices in the medbay. "This isn't the time for wringing hands and pointing fingers. You want to feel like crap for things you can't change? Go right ahead. But you won't be doing it on the flight deck of this ship."

Joker's jaw dropped, and he half-rose from his seat. His cheeks flushed hot beneath the ragged beard. "You can't—this is my—"

"I can," Garrus said. "I will. This isn't a negotiation. The bastards who did this to Shepard are still out there, and I intend to find them and make them pay. Anyone has a problem with how we're doing it, you're welcome to take the _Empire_ back to Earth and complain to someone who cares."

Solana spoke into the heavy silence. "Make them pay? Or bring them to justice?"

"Same thing," Grunt muttered, beating his fists together.

"Kowloon class ships are easy to navigate," he replied.

On the edge of his vision, Tali shook her head.

Solana's response didn't require words. She turned her face, and the angle of the tilt and the _I'm disappointed, Garrus_ essence of the gesture belonged so entirely to their mother he almost took a step backward. Hell. He almost blurted _I'm sorry, Mom; I won't do it again_ before he could swallow the words.

She said nothing. He took a deep breath slowly; released it twice as slow.

The moment passed.

"Anyone else?" he asked. No one spoke up. He knew Tali was uneasy, and expected her to voice that opinion later, but she'd fall in line. It was Shepard, after all. Zaeed looked dangerously pleased; Garrus would have to watch that, too. "Good. Dismissed. Joker, you're on a day's mandatory rest; then we leave for Mars. If I have to eat and sleep, so do you, and you're behind on both. If I see you in the cockpit, I will put you on the _Empire_ and lock the airlock door behind you."

"Aye, sir." It was the most grudging acquiescence Garrus had ever heard, but it was acquiescence nonetheless. Counted for something.

Garrus didn't linger. He glanced once more into the medbay to be certain Kaidan was holding his own, spared a moment to let his visor's readout reassure him Shepard was still safely unconscious, and then he strode toward the Engineering deck.

#

Garrus knew something was wrong when Javik didn't immediately complain about his presence. No _in my cycle we waited for the knock to be answered_ or _you are more bothersome than the asari, turian, always with your questions._ Instead, the Prothean leaned heavily over his water table, and barely raised his head when Garrus entered.

"You wish to know what I have sensed," Javik said without preamble, his accent somehow thicker, his words slow and touched with a tremor of emotion so unnerving Garrus didn't want to put a name to it. "I would… spare you. But I know you will not allow it."

Garrus swallowed past the knot of his own feelings, and leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms, his gaze unflinching. Javik looked up long enough to nod, and then he turned back to the water again.

"It was…" Javik put a hand to his head, and Garrus didn't know what was more disconcerting: the unfamiliar posture, hunched and horrified, or that the Prothean was, evidently, at a loss for words. "The commander, her mind is orderly. For a primitive. But on that ship? In that room? It is chaos." Javik dropped his arm again abruptly and shook his hands out as if they pained him. Then he began to pace. Three times he walked the length of the room and back, never once lifting his gaze from the floor.

That, Garrus decided, was the _most_ disconcerting thing: Javik was so preoccupied he was letting his guard down. Except in battle, when it was unavoidable because of Shepard's preferred tactics, the Prothean had never once turned his back to him.

"In… in my cycle," Javik began, haltingly, after the third pass, "we were familiar with the indoctrinated. We were better at detecting… interference."

"I know," Garrus said, trying to keep the impatience—the impatience and the dismay—from his subvocals. Not that it mattered; Javik could probably smell it on him. Or sense it. Or whatever inexplicable thing it was he did. "I met Vigil on Ilos. And Vendetta on Thessia. Both were programmed to sense indoctrinated presences." He paused, waiting for Javik to continue. When he didn't, Garrus pressed, "You… you don't seriously think Shepard's indoctrinated?"

"No, turian," Javik retorted, with a hint of his usual derision, but not nearly enough for it to be comforting. "The Reapers are gone. It is not indoctrination. I know indoctrination."

"I'm sensing an 'and yet' here, Javik. I don't like it."

Javik brought up a fist and, for a moment, flickers of his biotic energy danced around the clenched fingers. A moment later, the Prothean opened his hand and instead of a smoking hole in the far wall, the flickers of green light merely died. It was almost anti-climactic.

When Javik began to speak, however, Garrus shuddered at the undercurrent in the Prothean's voice. "It is not indoctrination, what was done to her, but it is not natural. The room… turian, be glad you cannot see things as I do. Even now, I hear her screaming."

_Please don't make me go back._

"Who's behind it?"

"I do not know," Javik said. "Her pain… it obscured all else. The other presences are the faintest whispers. Her memories became muddled, layers and layers of inexplicable experiences, each with no connection to either the thought before or the thought after. In that room, some things are true. Others are false. In that room she is a child, a young woman; hopeful and hopeless. In that room she is burning."

Javik plunged his hands into the water once again, as if they, too, were on fire. "I would do more if I could, turian. It is not just, the way they have dealt with her. She is a warrior, deserving of a warrior's battle and, if necessary, a warrior's death. Whatever their purpose, it stinks of deceit. It is not indoctrination, but, like the tricks the Reapers used, it is tastes of duplicity, and I will see vengeance done for it."

_I intend to find them and make them pay._

"We'll… bring them to justice," Garrus said, echoing his sister's words.

Javik smiled a cruel, tight smile. "You may call it what you wish, turian. The result is the same. They will die."

To distract himself—from protesting, from agreeing—Garrus fished out the container holding the single hair he'd rescued from the ship. "Can you get a read on this?"

Javik regarded it for several long seconds, his eyes blinking slowly. Then, carefully, he washed his hands again before reaching for it. Garrus had a hard time reading the Prothean's expressions at the best of times, but he was certain he'd never seen anything quite like this one. It was not battle-rage or bloodlust or even the flash of vengeance he'd witnessed just a moment before. It was not arrogance or dismissal. "Like everything else in that room, it is drenched with Shepard's memories. Chaotic. Disjointed. It is… strange. Through the commander's filter, I sense… hope. A human woman. The commander brings her to mind again and again. In her memory this dark-haired woman wears armor. Pink and white. The commander feels regret. And… grief. But I do not know this woman; her essence is unfamiliar to me."

"Pink and white armor? You don't… you can't mean Williams?" Garrus shook his head, peering at the dark hair still held between Javik's fingers. "That's not possible. She's been dead for years."

Here a little of Javik's usual disgust returned. "I did not say it was this human called Williams. Only that she is what Shepard's embattled mind fixated on. Perhaps it was only a resemblance. Perhaps it was nothing at all."

"Something familiar when everything else wasn't." Garrus sighed, once again disappointed. It wasn't as though he'd been imagining Javik taking a taste or a feel or a sniff and suddenly coming up with a name and convenient coordinates to go along with it, but…

But Williams was dead, and Shepard's tormentors had broken her so well they'd managed to cover their tracks even in her memory, even down to the essence only a damned Prothean could sense.

"Turian," Javik added, placing the hair back in its container and holding it out for Garrus to take. "Thoughts of you remained clear longer than the rest."

"Uh. Thanks," Garrus said, stricken, when what he really meant was _if only I'd come sooner._


	20. Bringing Rain

_She is five years old, and she is in big, big trouble. _

_She's supposed to be at home, safe in her bedroom, taking a nap. She isn't. She's at the playground by the school even though her parents said, "No, sweetheart, not today," when she asked them to take her._

_The swings aren't as fun without someone to push her. Even kicking as hard as she can, she can barely make herself sway, and it smells like it's going to rain. At home, where it's warm and dry and she's supposed to be asleep in her bed, her papa is probably finishing up work on someone's broken equipment, and her mama's probably out in the garden, smiling because her plants need the watering. It's been so dry. They'll come inside when it starts raining, she knows, and they'll stand side by side in the kitchen scrubbing the grease and dirt from their hands, and then they'll go upstairs to check on her—they always check on her—and she won't be there. They'll be mad and they'll probably be scared. She should've thought about it before. It was stupid not to._

_Even though they'll look here first, she can't bring herself to leave. She kicks harder. The swing moves a few inches. Her feet don't touch the ground._

_"Hey," says a voice, and she almost falls out of the swing. Another little girl sits next to her, even though she's sure the second seat was just empty. She doesn't recognize the new girl, whose dark hair is held back by a pink ribbon, and who's wearing a ruffled white dress prettier than anything she's ever seen before. It's even prettier than her mama's yellow dress, the one she got married in, the one she sometimes wears to dance in the living room with papa when they think she's asleep. The other girl's shoes are black and shiny. One sock is pulled up to her knee; the other is bunched around her ankle._

_She stares at the bunched-up sock because it's the only thing about the other girl that isn't perfect as a princess in a storybook._

_"Hi," she says, suddenly shy._

_The other girl kicks hard several times and swings high, almost as high as if Papa were here pushing. The wind makes her hair float out around her head, pulling the pink ribbon loose, and she laughs._

_She is about to laugh, too, when a drop of rain splashes against her cheek, cold enough to make her flinch._

_"You're not supposed to be here," the girl says._

_She hangs her head, gazing down at her feet. Her shoes are scuffed, and she thinks they used to be white, but now they're just dirty grey with a faded blue stripe down the side. "I know. I'm gonna be in big trouble."_

_"You're already in big trouble, Skipper."_

_She frowns, a weird feeling creeping around in her stomach like she's about to be sick. Swallowing hard, she says, "That's not my name."_

_The girl in the white and pink stops swinging and turns in her seat, her hands clutching the chains so hard her knuckles turn pale. "I used to call you that. Don't you remember?"_

_Lifting her chin, she glares. "I never even met you before."_

_The girl sighs and flings herself off her swing, the sand puffing up in a cloud around her shiny shoes. Her dress is going to get dirty, but she doesn't seem to care. Both socks fall down around her ankles. "They worked you over good, didn't they?"_

_The girl sounds so sad she wants to jump down from the swing and run away, pretend she never saw the white dress or pink ribbon or bunched-up sock. She wants to run home and crawl into her bed and put her head under the pillow and wait for her mama to come sing her lullabies in her off-key voice. She doesn't. _

_She knows she's not supposed to talk to strangers, but this girl makes her think of warm things, home things, and she almost doesn't seem like a stranger at all. It's the sadness that scares her, not the girl._

_So, instead of running away, she only clutches the chains of her swing tighter and says, "Your ribbon fell off."_

_The girl reaches down and tugs up both her sagging socks, and then, smiling, pushes a hand through her heavy hair. The ribbon is caught on the edge of the grass, already damp from the falling rain. Still, she crosses the sand and picks up the scrap of silk, running it through her fingers. Then she holds it out, its ends swaying gently in the breeze. "You want it? Maybe it'll help."_

_She shrugs because she wants it so badly she can taste it, but Mama always says she should be polite and not be too loud and to always try and control her excitement, even when it's hard._

_"It's okay," says the other girl, coming closer. "Here. It's a bit dirty, but it'll still hold your hair back."_

_"Okay."_

_The other girl's hands are gentle as they pull the ends of the pink ribbon into a neat bow at the top of her head. When she's finished, she crouches down a bit, until they're eye to eye. "You want me to give you a push?"_

_The squirmy feeling comes back to her stomach, and the running feeling makes her feet itch. She shakes her head and thinks maybe the ribbon's tied too tight, because her head aches._

_"Scared, Skipper? That's not like you."_

_"You don't know me."_

_The other girl presses the tips of her fingertips very softly to her cheek. Her skin is warm and dry. Safe. She sounds like a grownup when she says, "I know you better than you know yourself."_

_"I'm not scared," she says, defiant. And maybe a little scared. "Sometimes my papa pushes me so high it's like I'm flying."_

_With a light tap of finger to nose, the girl says, "Flying's a good feeling. Want to go for it?"_

_"Yeah," she says, sitting up straight and turning her face forward. Her nose wrinkles when she catches the smell of really strong flowers, but as soon as the girl in the white dress gives her the first push, the wind pulls the scent right out of the air. The girl is stronger than she looks, and soon the swing flies higher and higher and higher, hitching at the top before swooping back down again. The rain is still cold on her face, but she hardly feels it because the wind is singing in her ears and at the top of the arc she feels like she could do anything. _

_"I'll see you all when you get back!" the girl in the white dress cries._

_She knows it's not true. They both know it's not true._

_"Hey, Skipper." Warm hands find her back, giving her one more solid push. "Jump off when you hit the top! And don't forget to breathe!"_

_She doesn't know if she can do it. She's up so high, and she feels so small, but the warmth of the hands on her back remains and just before she starts to drop again, she unclenches her hands from around the swing's chains, and she leaps._

#

Even though Liara would never have risked compromising their situation by sending messages over unsecured channels, Garrus couldn't quite shake a lingering feeling of unease as days passed without contact from her. Or Hackett. Or his father, for that matter. Traynor gave him an apologetic frown every time he asked for a report, but in a week of steady disappointments, silence from Earth was small in comparison.

DNA analysis on the hair proved as unenlightening as speaking with Javik about it. Chakwas had looked at him like he needed to be sedated when he asked her to run the DNA against Williams', but of course it hadn't matched.

That was the problem: DNA wasn't much use if you didn't have a comparison sample, and with communications in disarray across the galaxy, it wasn't as simple as running things against Alliance files or colony rosters or public health databases. All they could tell was that whomever the hair belonged to either wasn't located in the sectors of public databases they could reach, or their information had been lost. Or, more worrying, had been erased. Perhaps when they returned to Earth, Liara might have other resources, but he wasn't about to transmit anything so sensitive. Not if they were being watched. Not if they were being listened to.

Tali and Traynor pulled several packets of information from the wiped computers—a triumph in and of itself—but everything was so heavily encrypted they had yet to learn anything other than yes, they had information and no, they had no idea what it was. Garrus spent more than a few hours attempting every trick he had in his not-insignificant arsenal, but whatever secret the _Empire_'s computers held remained firmly locked.

He missed EDI. He hadn't quite realized how much he took her for granted until she was gone, leaving an AI-shaped hole he'd never have imagined existing before. Solana insisted she was still making progress, still trying to make sense of Cerberus' science, but it was like the DNA. Without knowing what had caused the malfunction, it was nearly impossible to imagine finding a fix. She had some theories about rebuilding from scratch, but he didn't hold out much hope for a rebuilt EDI to be… EDI.

And all the while, he tried not to think about obvious parallels. Mostly, he failed.

Shepard slept. Day in and day out, Chakwas kept her deeply under, monitoring every breath, every fluctuation in brain activity or heart rate. She didn't seize in her sleep, at least, and her bones were almost healed, but the doctor admitted she was no closer to understanding what had been done to her.

"I am a physician, Garrus," she snapped peevishly, arm still healing and bruises from the broken nose now fading to yellow on the edges. "I daresay a good one, but my abilities are finite. This is not purely medical, and I am not Mordin Solus. Let me heal her body; then we may focus on the rest."

So they turned to Mars, and to the hope that Miranda would be there waiting for them. Even knowing how slim the chance was—Miranda, as best he knew, had been running dangerous solo missions toward the end of the war, and hadn't been heard from since—he couldn't completely dismiss his hope.

_That's your fault, Shepard. You and your damned hope. I was doing just fine without it._

He decided against bringing the entire squad planetside again. In the end, he stuck to Shepard's standard three-person team, and asked Grunt and Javik to suit up, covering his bases with biotics and brute force. Alenko he left in charge, with orders to retreat if things went wrong. The man nodded, looking haunted, while Joker, behind him in the cockpit, remained obstinately silent.

It was a very different kind of ride down in the Kodiak this time, without all the pushing and shoving and expectant tension. The hold seemed empty with only the three of them to fill it, and too quiet. When Cortez cleared his throat, Garrus nearly jumped.

"Picking up a single fighter, sir. Not registered with the Alliance, and definitely fitted with jamming tech."

Garrus snorted. "Sounds paranoid enough to be Miranda. Bring us in slow, Cortez. Class-F can outmaneuver us, but we've got better firepower."

Cortez's low chuckle was wry. "Careful there, sir, or I'll come into the battery and start talking to you about what you know best."

Behind them, Grunt laughed, a single sharp bark, and Garrus' mandibles flicked into a smile. "Yeah, yeah. Point taken."

"She's transmitting a parley message. Basically the equivalent of a white flag."

Garrus leaned forward and sighed. "So, either friendly or a trap."

"They probably feel the same way about us, sir."

"Let them know we're here to talk. We'll be prepared for the worst."

"So, same as usual."

"Reapers hardly ever wanted to talk. And Cerberus was even less chatty. But yeah." Garrus clapped Cortez lightly on the shoulder before heading back to his seat.

The Kodiak landed on the hospital roof without enduring fire, and Garrus was the first to disembark, unarmed. He knew Grunt was ready with his shotgun, and Javik already glowed faintly with biotics, but neither, it appeared would be necessary.

A moment after they landed, an asari climbed down from the fighter's cockpit. Even if she hadn't been wearing the skin-tight red and black armor he was accustomed to, he'd have recognized her ageless, lethal grace anywhere.

"_Samara_?"

A very faint smile cracked her mask of cool serenity and said she heard the surprise in his subharmonics very clearly. "Garrus," she said. "It is good to see you. I wish the circumstances were different ones."

"What are you doing here?"

Never one for extraneous movement, she inclined her head slightly. Even with the appearance of ease, he knew very well she could have killed him with a thought, and probably taken the rest of them without so much as breaking a sweat. A weapon honed for a thousand years. Hell, he didn't think even Javik could compare. "Forgive the necessary subterfuge. Our mutual acquaintance has reason to distrust communications. She could not discover the present location of Ms. Lawson. She did find me. When she explained what she could, I wished to offer aid."

He had grown so accustomed to disappointment that this one hardly registered, and wasn't sure if that was a bad or good sign. "Not that I don't appreciate it, but… I need a scientist. Hell, I _need_ Miranda. She's the only one who—"

"Not the only one," Samara said, and the gravity in her tone made his plates itch.

Samara reached out and tapped the door's locking mechanism with the side of her fist. When the hatch slid open, Garrus was left staring at a smirking, dark-haired woman _decidedly _not Miranda Lawson, whom he'd last seen not taking the bullet to the head he'd gladly have supplied. At least, he noted, she appeared to be wearing a prisoner's jumpsuit and was no longer wearing purloined Alliance blues.

"Not who you expected?" Maya Brooks—or whatever her current name was—smiled her cutting, devious smile and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Yes, well. Beggars can't be choosers, can they?"

"You've got to be kidding," Garrus muttered.

Brooks sighed. Her arms and ankles were bound, but she wore the imprisonment as if it were merely a mild inconvenience. "What can I say? I'm like a cockroach." She blinked at him, all wide-eyed, false innocence. "Or don't you have those on Palaven? Still, they must've made their way to Omega."

Garrus turned away, prepared to head back to the Kodiak, and the _Normandy_, and his own futile search for answers.

"Garrus." Samara managed to sound calm and utterly disapproving all at the same time, and he paused. "I would not be here if I did not believe this the best option available to us. I will act without hesitation should she… misbehave. She knows this."

"She does," Brooks added. "And since I'm the only other living creature who knows half what you need to know about Shepard, I think you'd better swallow your pride, don't you?"

He ignored her, meeting Samara's gaze. "Doesn't cutting deals with criminals violate the tenets of your Code?"

"Yes," she answered without hesitation. "Nor is there justice in what has been done to Shepard. This is not a compromise, Garrus. She will never again go free."

"But I won't be dead, either," Brooks added. "Funny what kind of motivator that can be."

It took Garrus mere heartbeats to cross the sandy pavement, drawing his pistol and pressing the barrel to Brooks' brow, just between her eyes. "I will kill you if you hurt her."

Brooks merely smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "I did wonder if she'd neutered you, Archangel. I suppose I'm pleased to see she hasn't."

"You shouldn't be," Garrus snapped. Samara watched him, her expression betraying nothing, and he stilled the urge to cold cock Brooks with the butt of his pistol. "She's never left alone. Not to eat, not to sleep, not to go the damned bathroom." He lowered his gun, holstering it again. "I've got a list of medical supplies to find for the doctor. We'll talk more on the ship, but I need to know if you can work with me on this, Samara."

"Justice must be done," she replied.

"Fair enough," he said. "But if your Code needs me dead, you need to put it on hold until the bastards who did this to Shepard are taken care of."

Again she inclined her head, but he noticed—and he knew she was _aware_ he noticed—she did not quite agree with him.

"And we're all a big, happy family once again," Brooks sing-songed.

"Does your Code object to gagging her?" Garrus drawled.

"It does not," Samara replied, and he was gratified to sense some of the tension between them eased—and even more pleased, still, to see Brooks flinch.

###

**Author's Note:****_ updates may be more sporadic than usual for the next three weeks, as I'll be away from home. I promise not to leave you hanging, but I doubt I'll be able to stick to my usual schedule._**


	21. Speak to Me

After nearly two weeks aboard the _Normandy_, the only thing Solana could be certain of was that she was never going to understand it, not really. It wasn't a matter of layout—even with the changes, she still saw the bones of the SR-1 underneath the larger, flashier skin Cerberus had built for it. Nor was it a matter of technical design: she'd read every available bit of text, and had let herself learn hands-on as much as her strained detente with Tali'Zorah allowed.

Beneath all that, though, was something different, the kind of thing turians called a Spirit, and that was the piece she couldn't quite make sense of. Perhaps because she wasn't part of it. The _Normandy_ crew couldn't be more different each from the other if they tried, and yet they moved as a unit. The tattooed woman who swore often enough to give Solana's translator a workout trying to keep up was prickly and angry, but she still made enough coffee in the morning to go around, and, if she thought no one was watching, might even prepare a second cup to deliver to the doctor or the pilot or Zaeed. The Prothean—and Solana was still having trouble wrapping her mind around _that_—sometimes joined them for meals, though he rarely ate and seemed mostly to enjoy insulting everyone at the table. Some flung insults back. Once she even heard him laugh. Things that would have ended in altercations at the very least on a turian ship were shrugged off. Or laughed off. Under the heavy weight of ever-present tension even the most opposite of the opposites shared a certain kind of camaraderie. They'd gone to hell and back together. They'd fought and bled and lost comrades, and yet the only thing they all had in common was the ship, and Shepard.

Even the most gifted officers she'd ever served with hadn't commanded that kind of loyalty, or acted as that kind of adhesive. Solana thought of the woman she'd so briefly met, compared her to the overblown images she'd caught on the vids, ran both pictures alongside the little she knew from her brother's stories, and still came up baffled and drawing blanks. The longer she remained aboard, the more she wanted to meet the Shepard they all knew, wanted to see for herself the woman behind the legend. And the more she dreaded what it would mean if she never got the chance.

The crew had been even more subdued since abandoning the _Empire_ and setting a course back to Mars. Not that she blamed them. Even the little she'd managed to overhear (_fine_, eavesdrop; a tactical cloak came in handy when you were the outsider no one kept in the loop) had been awful enough to make her glad she'd been ship-bound. She wasn't often grateful for her injury, but the looks on the faces and the haunted, brief exchanges—"There were fucking kids down there, fuck. Just… left." and "Didn't look too close. Some of those bones… don't want to think about what they resorted to."—were enough to paint pictures her mind couldn't simply shake off.

Even eavesdropping hadn't enlightened her as to the reason they were _back_ at the dead planet. Garrus hadn't offered the information, and she knew better than to press, especially given how unstable he'd been since Shepard's regression. On a turian ship, any commander as obviously biased—and compromised—as her brother would immediately have been stripped of his office. Hell, she had a hard time stopping herself from reeling off the dozen regulations and rules he was in breach of and relieving him herself. Here, though, on this ship, his emotion seemed to act instead as a binding force, a rallying point. She found herself wondering if this, too, was some legacy of Shepard's.

She found herself wondering if her brother would ever really recover. That thought was harder to bear.

Solana was sitting alone in the mess, listlessly picking at one of the dextro ration bars—abominably bad even by military standards—when her brother returned from his planetside mission. She blinked as he strode past her, frustration and the barely-controlled, seething rage she was beginning to fear was permanent making him seem twice as menacing. She didn't think he even saw her. She'd never have admitted it—not to him, not to anyone—but she almost preferred his sadness. The anger was potent fuel, but it scraped away at the things she loved best about him—his gentleness, his kindness, his humor—leaving only a scarred and bitter weapon, too used to the taste of blood and always seeking more.

The tableau was made stranger still by the women who followed on Garrus' heels. She recognized neither. One was human, wearing a hideous orange jumpsuit, hands bound in front of her. The other, an asari, was dressed in skin-tight red and black armor and moved like a dancer, if a dancer could kill with a thought. The asari scanned the room, her gaze briefly resting on Solana. Her expression remained eerily serene, but Solana felt in her bones that if the asari wished it, she would be dead before her heart finished its next beat. Evidently, she wasn't determined to be a threat: the asari and her charge disappeared behind Garrus into the medbay. Solana wanted to follow, but couldn't bring herself to move. All the curiosity in the galaxy wasn't quite enough to shake the feeling of unease the asari's gaze had left in its wake.

A few moments later, the Spectre, Alenko, slid into the seat opposite her. They'd shared only a few words before this, generally restricted to pleasantries. He did not look as though he wanted to discuss pleasantries now. She didn't need to be familiar with human expressions to recognize exhaustion in his, and resignation. He didn't complain, though, and waited only for a nod of greeting before saying, "Hey. I—sorry, you're probably going to need a refresher course. Don't imagine Garrus had any reason to bring up this flavor of crazy. Uh, it's not something any of us wanted to dwell on, really, but I think it was worse for him. You know. All things considered."

Solana pushed away the rations and folded her hands in her lap, turning words over in an attempt to find the right ones. Small talk aside, she didn't know how to address him. It was another thing she didn't understand about the way the _Normandy_ worked. On a turian ship, protocol dictated nearly everything, and she'd have known exactly where she stood in any given situation based on rank and tier. She'd have known proper forms of address, and appropriate parameters of conversation. None of those rules translated here. Garrus was in command, but even he wasn't safe from the friendly jibes and needling. Alenko was a Spectre, but that rank didn't automatically translate into respect; he was, she noted, nearly as much an outsider as she. His tone seemed friendly, but she didn't want to offend him by replying in kind and appearing rude or overly familiar. In the end, she settled on, "Do you mean the asari and her prisoner?"

"Yes," he said. "And no. The asari—I don't know her well. She's another from the Cerberus cre—from the crew who took down the Collector base. Her name's Samara. She's a Justicar."

Solana couldn't help it. She laughed. "You're kidding, right?"

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. She'd seen him do it just enough times to realize it was some kind of coping mechanism, like the way she tapped code patterns against her thigh or Garrus shifted from foot to foot when he was nervous. "Yeah, no. I've read the reports and most of… well, everything this crew has ever done just sounds nuts. I can't imagine what it's like for someone… new to it all."

Solana shook her head. "I guess the whole 'sentient machines from dark space coming to kill us all' warning coming to pass set a pretty high bar for acceptable levels of insane things being true when you lot are involved."

He looked like he was going to run his hands through his hair again, but stopped himself at the last moment, frowning. "Right. The thing is, it's not Samara who's the strange part of this particular story."

"Of course not," Solana agreed, disbelief lending her words an air of informality she'd have avoided otherwise. "An asari from a practically mythological order of warrior-monks is nothing compared to a tank-bred perfect krogan or a Prothean woken up from a fifty thousand year sleep or—"

"Or the woman who was responsible for unleashing Shepard's clone, nearly killing Shepard and taking out the rest of us as collateral being allowed back on this ship after she very nearly succeeded in stealing it right out from under us not two months ago."

Solana didn't even attempt to school her features. Her mandibles flared wide and she made a startled sound deep in her throat before choking out, "Clone? You're not—you are. Really. A clone."

"And here you thought the sentient race of killer machines was as strange as it got." He managed a lopsided smile and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "In all seriousness? Saying the word 'clone' out loud never gets easier." Alenko was evidently familiar enough with turian expressions to recognize utter disbelief in hers. "I guess when Cerberus was bringing Shepard back, they wanted, I don't know, insurance. Or extra parts, though I don't know why they'd bother making their organ harvest capable of thinking and feeling. It's all pretty damned murky, but—"

"I'm sorry," Solana interrupted. "'Bringing Shepard back'? From…?"

"Dammit, Garrus," Alenko muttered. "I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this, since I didn't exactly believe it, either, but Shepard was… dead. Cerberus wasn't content to leave her that way. So they… rebuilt her. The woman Garrus was hoping to find on Mars, Miranda Lawson? She was the head of that project. Brooks—whatever her real name is—worked on it too, but later went rogue, stole the clone, and then waited until the damned war was in full-swing before unleashing it. Her."

"To what purpose?"

Alenko shrugged, hands held wide. "Power? Prestige? Some weird brand of vengeance? Hell if I know. She wanted a Shepard of her own, and she wanted the _Normandy_, but I have no idea what her reasoning was. It's not like the Reapers were going anywhere. I—"

He stopped so abruptly Solana knew at once it was because he wanted to say something and didn't know if he should. Probably, she thought, because it had something to do with Garrus. Or because he didn't agree with Garrus. Taking a slight risk, she asked, "You don't approve of her being here?"

She counted to ten before Alenko replied, "The woman's a sociopath. Garrus thinks she might be able to tell what's going on with Shepard, but—" Here he stopped again, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. She heard his long inhale.

"But if she's as bad as you think, you're not sure why she'd help."

"Or if her help will be help at all," he said. "She showed no qualms about lying before, to get what she wanted. She could make things worse. She might make things worse just because she can. She's poison."

Solana thought about the careful balance of power aboard the _Normandy_, all built on trust. How much poison would it take to upset that balance? How much to destroy it?

"Sorry," Alenko said, when she didn't immediately answer. "I shouldn't have—"

Solana chuckled, silencing him. "It's better to know. Can I ask you something?"

Alenko blinked at her, and then gave a reluctant little nod.

"What would she do?"

"Shepard?" he asked, the word like a prayer on his lips. "I wish I knew. I don't think she'd be happy about Brooks, but she didn't kill the woman when she had the chance and, then again… then again, she worked with Cerberus when she needed their resources, and there was a time I'd never have imagined her doing that, either."

"And… and Garrus?" Solana asked, hating the way her subvocals trembled on her brother's name. "Is he…" She didn't know how to finish the question. _Is he okay? Is he sane? Is he always like this? Is this who he is now?_

Alenko's shoulders rounded and he stared at the table as though he expected it to give him answers. Finally, he sighed, and raised his gaze to meet hers. His smooth human skin was furrowed, and the lines at the corners of his eyes made him look old. She didn't think she was imagining more of the silvery hair at his temples than even had been present a fortnight earlier. "He's your brother," Alenko said softly. "What do _you_ think?"

She looked for words, but found only more questions, more doubts. More fears. All weighted with the certainty that she couldn't speak any of them aloud without stepping over the very fine line between conversation and insubordination.

She wasn't there yet. Until now, until this Brooks woman, Garrus hadn't put them in _danger._ Now, though, if what Alenko said was true… she shuddered, and couldn't even blame it on the perfectly-controlled temperature.

When she said nothing, Alenko bent his head again, and put his face in his hands. "Yeah," he said, the word muffled by his palms. "That's what I think, too."


	22. The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter

Garrus regretted his decision almost immediately, though he couldn't have said exactly why. It wasn't anything specific. Brooks didn't immediately launch herself at Shepard's prostrate form, or draw some heretofore unnoticed weapon, or blind them all with a flashbang grenade in order to seize the ship again. He already knew she wasn't carrying an omni-tool and he'd run every diagnostic available to him to make certain she wasn't implanted with illicit tech. She shouldn't have been a threat. He'd done everything in his power to ensure she _wouldn't_ be a threat. And still his plates itched and his fingers twitched, longing to reach for a weapon. Longing to put that weapon to use. Brooks didn't belong here, and he couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that they'd signed some kind of warrant by allowing her to once again come aboard.

Brooks was the kind of person who'd smirk at the fall of an enemy. Garrus had no doubts on that score. He was waiting for it. And yet she didn't. Once the medbay door closed behind Samara, Brooks merely froze, and stared.

He'd been watching closely to see what—if anything—her expression might betray, and what he saw wasn't what he'd expected. Too thoughtful, when he'd been anticipating smug. A faint, confused furrow instead of a dubiously raised eyebrow. She even looked as though she was biting the inside of her bottom lip. For a moment he was taken in; he almost let himself believe she might give a damn. Then, of course, he remembered how she'd played them so easily before, with her sycophantic fervor and her well-timed compliments, and he crossed his arms over his chest, returning her stare with one of his own. His promised pain if she dared deception, and wasn't disingenuous in the slightest. Hell, she almost wished she'd try something so he'd have a good reason to end her.

The entire exchange lasted only a moment. Two heartbeats. Three. His visor told him nothing; Brooks' pulse didn't fluctuate and her vitals remained irritatingly regular. She tilted her head in his direction, and if his gaze unnerved her, she gave no sign of it. "And? What precisely do you want me to do? I have any number of skills, but I am afraid mind-reading's not one of them." She arched a brow and gestured with her chin. "Better luck letting my jailer have a go, if that's what you're looking for, since I haven't the faintest idea what's wrong with her except that she's obviously unconscious."

If the initial moment had contained anything resembling genuine sympathy, it had vanished completely. Garrus turned to Chakwas, whose disapproval was writ plain on _her_ features, though she spoke none of it aloud. "Could you give her a rundown?"

When the doctor began to extend a datapad, Garrus shot his hand out to grab it first. "No tech," he insisted. "No matter how innocuous."

"I'm wounded," Brooks murmured, the corner of her mouth lifted and her posture still as damnably relaxed as was possible for someone in custody. Her sharp eyes held no ghost of humor. "One might think you don't trust me. Once bitten, twice shy as the old saying goes, I suppose. Only in your case, it's once betrayed, never quite stop looking for the next knife in the back. Isn't that right, Archangel?"

He didn't flinch. He didn't so much as blink. He knew exactly what kind of a reaction she was hoping to provoke and he'd be damned thrice over if he obliged. Even his silence was enough for her though; she laughed and lifted her shoulders in a half shrug. "I do wonder, though," she added conversationally, "if—even with Shepard to follow—you might've been a little less keen, had you all the relevant information to hand. You were so very intent on hunting down your traitor, you never really asked who'd manipulated him, did you?"

Garrus said nothing, gesturing to Chakwas. Brooks' gaze never left Garrus, though, and as soon as the doctor began to speak, Brooks interrupted her, saying, "Didn't you think the timing was suspect? You'd been needling the Blue Suns for months. How convenient, then, they'd choose _exactly_ that moment to capture your esteemed compatriot. _Just_ in time for Shepard to ride to the rescue."

"Maya," Samara said, cool and implacable. "Enough."

Brooks batted her eyelashes, once again the picture of the guileless Alliance Staff Analyst. Looking at her now, it galled him that he'd ever been taken in by her machinations. "Am I upsetting you, Archangel? Forgive me. I only thought you'd like to know. I find it so hard to believe you never asked. I find it harder to believe _Shepard_ never did. She always liked puzzles, didn't she? It's certainly one of the things I'd have written into _her_ dossier." The false innocence vanished as Brooks narrowed her eyes. "Then again, perhaps she _did_ wonder, and it's only that she never brought her suspicions to you. It could be that relationship was never quite the two-way street you always believed it to be. So many things Shepard kept to herself, really. Perhaps the suspicion that Cerberus had some hand in orchestrating the events on Omega was only one more."

"Shut up," he said, hating the tightness in his subvocals. His mandibles gave an irate little flick. "Or I'll hand you over to Javik, and I'm sure he'll take great joy in disposing of you."

"Oh, do. I quite like the cranky old bastard. He must be at loose ends now the Reapers are gone. Could be I might persuade him that death by airlock isn't the best use for me. I can be a very valuable asset."

"Be silent." Samara didn't raise her voice. She didn't lose her temper. Garrus found himself wanting to abide by the command even though it hadn't been meant for him. Brooks sent a baleful look over her shoulder, but she didn't speak.

It was a small victory, but one he'd take.

Garrus inhaled and released the breath slowly, until the urge to do irreparable damage to Brooks and her smirk faded. "The doctor will tell you what we know, you can tell us what the hell Cerberus did to her, and no one has to die in the next half hour."

Brooks' bark of laughter, disconcertingly loud in the silent room, was too harsh and graceless to be borne of anything but genuine surprise. Then she glanced back at Samara, almost concerned, and raised her eyebrows in silent question. Samara nodded.

Brooks cleared her throat. "I don't know who did this, but I guarantee it's not Cerberus. Too ham-handed. What was I just saying?" She sighed, and her tone shifted, taking on the quality of a parent giving a dull child a lecture. "Cerberus knew Shepard needed a familiar face—a familiar teammate—on the _Normandy_. I rather suspect the Illusive Man regretted his choice later, but at the time you were an excellent choice. A loose cannon. Devoted to Shepard. Frustrated with the status quo to the tune of turning vigilante. So they arranged everything. Planted the dossier. Made Shepard think you—Garrus Vakarian, her old friend—weren't interested in having anything to do with her. The moment the _Normandy_ set a course for Omega, the Illusive Man started the ball rolling. Lantar Sidonis was captured, tortured, blackmailed. Operatives planted in all three merc bands set previously determined plans in motion. Your base was attacked. You were left to die. Or, rather, left for Shepard to rescue."

He asked, "And the gunship? Blowing half my face off? Was that part of the Illusive Man's plan too?" before he could think better of the questions and swallow them. Samara's expression was too serene to be reproachful, but he knew at once he shouldn't have let Brooks continue spinning her tales and playing her games.

She was too damned dangerous. And he couldn't afford to let her pry her way under his plates. Not with so much at stake.

Lifting an unperturbed shoulder, she explained, "Tarak wanted you dead. The Illusive Man said he was welcome to try as long as he waited for the redhead in the N7-emblazoned armor to show up first. Even if you died, he felt certain Shepard would be moved to action by it; vengeance and loss would bind her closer to him and his goals. If you survived, he knew Shepard would convince you to use your skills for his gain. For him, it was a win-win situation. _That_ is the level of precision they maneuvered with, and this? Even the clones were never treated like this." Brooks tried to gesture and frowned when her bound hands prevented it. "This is a foolish child playing with an heirloom, thinking it's just a disposable toy. And it most certainly was _not_ Cerberus."

Another glance in Samara's direction bought him a minute shake of the head, too subtle even for Brooks to have noticed. Information, then. Things it was better their unwelcome and conniving prisoner did not know. From Liara, most likely. He hoped she had a direction to point him in; he was growing increasingly certain Brooks would be of little help. Whether she had the capacity or not.

Garrus listened to the reassuring beep of Shepard's heart monitor—_beep beep beep_—and attempted to regulate his own breathing to match. When he was calm, and could speak with only the faintest hum of exasperation in his subharmonics, he said, "Why didn't the clone have any of Shepard's memories?"

Brooks turned a skeptical frown his way. "Because I didn't want her to. Shepard's memories were problematic. Perhaps if she'd been colder, more calculating, more _ruthless_, I'd have left well enough alone, but, frankly, a blank canvas is so much easier to paint on. I wanted her for a purpose. I didn't need all that bloody nobility getting in the way, did I?"

Garrus swallowed. _Beep. Beep. Beep. _He didn't need Shepard's voice in his head to know she'd insist he not kill the prisoner. No matter how much he wanted to. "Brainwashing? Brain _damage_? How did you do it?"

She heaved an irritated sigh. "Cloning is not a perfect art. Surely you noticed little changes? Especially in the beginning? Before she settled? Temperament off, decisions skewed? Things… not quite right? It was bound to happen. Your version was certainly the best of the bunch," she added, a flicker of sneer in her drawl. "You oughtn't beat yourself up for not seeing it."

In this, too, Garrus could sense the ploy, the seeds of doubt being sown, and though he didn't want to admit it—didn't want to _believe_ it—he remembered those early days, when Shepard was angrier and sharper and less patient, the strange red scars on her face still glowing beneath unhealed skin. He'd been angry too, and frustrated, endlessly haunted by the dead eyes of his dead team, and a part of him—if he was being honest—had appreciated Shepard's uncompromising edge, so different than the endless, endless patience she'd shown during the hunt to bring down Saren and Sovereign. She had seemed harder, less forgiving. He'd put it down to the strange circumstances surrounding her return.

And sometimes, alone in the main battery, he'd let himself wonder just what Cerberus had done to her.

Mostly, though, he'd seen what he wanted to see. He'd convinced himself. Hell, he'd convinced _her_. _I'm glad you're not fine, _he'd told her after the suicide mission, when she'd been asking questions and terrified of the answers all at once. _It's a real thing, a feeling thing. Means you're you, and not some kind of clever, cold program wearing a Shepard face._

"She's _Shepard_," he insisted.

Believing it.

And also remembering the look on the clone's face as she fell to her death.

Brooks scowled. "Yes, yes. The great Commander Shepard, has no equal, accept no substitutes. Miranda did a very good job. Very meticulous. Very thorough. If only she were here now." Her lips twisted. "Alas, you've only me. Her memories have been tampered with, then? Neither of your asari have been particularly forthcoming with details."

"If it were?" Garrus asked.

Brooks flashed a bright, fake smile. "I'd think it a particularly ironic twist of fate. I was much better _ridding_ the clone of her mangled memories. Miranda didn't quite trust anyone else to play with the 'real' Shepard's brain. Her heart, now? Oh, I was always a bit of a master when it came to… ventricles. But then, you know her heart well, too, don't you?"

Garrus' hands closed into fists at his sides.

"Oh, don't fret, Archangel," she said airily. "I still know more than your field medic doctor. We'll see if we can't put this Shepard to rights. If you'll set aside your paranoia and let me see the problem. I needn't actually _touch_ the machines, but it would be awfully helpful to get a look at her brainwaves."

Garrus nodded reluctantly and stood over Brooks' shoulder, watching her every move, listening to the rise and fall of Chakwas' voice reciting the familiar litany of Shepard's ills, as the feeling of having made a terrible mistake only grew.


	23. Then Spoke the Thunder

_It's not just raining now, it's pouring, and she stumbles through the dark, breath coming in desperate gasps. Running. Always running. She just can't remember why. Or what from. Something bad. Something awful. She knows that much. Doesn't she? _

_Her head aches. The mud drags at her feet with every step, slowing her down, pulling her under._

_The words of the ancient nursery rhyme run circles in her mind. Her voice. _It's raining._ Her mother's voice. _It's pouring. _The voices of all the children in her kindergarten class, once upon a time. _The old man is snoring.

_Mama will wonder where she is._

He fell out of bed and bumped his head.

_No. No, Mama isn't alive to care. Mama's perennially dirt-stained fingers are wet with blood now, and they will never again dig in the earth, never again coax life from the hard ground, never again pull tangles from her hair. Papa won't sing nonsense songs, or fix even the most unfixable broken things, or buy overpriced perfume for his wild Irish Rose. All the children in her kindergarten class are dead, or worse._

And he couldn't get up in the morning.

_She never understood that part when she was a little girl. She understands it now._

_The rain doesn't wash away the stink of smoke and blood. It doesn't drown out the sound of screams._

_But that's wrong too. When she looks down, she's not holding her father's screwdriver; a pink ribbon is wrapped tightly around her palm. Instead of a half-unbuttoned shirt, sodden white chiffon tangles around her stumbling feet. She looks back just long enough to see the glint of rhinestones in the mud behind her. The stars are falling and she can't breathe and the air tastes of roses even as it stinks of death._

_Mustn't look back. Mustn't. Mustn't. She doesn't belong here and she has to keep moving forward. It's what she was trained to do, isn't it? What do—what do you—what do you need me to do? She always does what's needed, doesn't she? _I'm a weapon. Point me at a target and shoot.

_She's supposed to be somewhere else. With someone else? She's lost her pretty shoes and the mud sucks at her toes and her dress is dirty to the knees. Her foster mother is going to kill her. She's going to be in so much trouble. _

_You're practically part of the family._

_What family, though? The one she was born into, ripped away when she was still closer to the child she was than the adult she became? Certainly not the one forced upon her, with their expectations and their rules and their fake smiles. The one she chose for herself? She ought to remember their faces. She ought to remember their names. But the rain beats down on her, and the mud clings to her, and all she knows is that the pink ribbon belongs to a girl who died too soon and that somewhere someone else is waiting for her. At the bar? No. That's not quite right. None of this is quite right._

_A bad dream. A nightmare. _

_And yet all the pinching in the world doesn't wake her up. She tries. Oh, God, she tries._

_He had an order for her. _Forgive the insubordination_, but he's never really insubordinate, is he? Not to her. She's good at following orders. She doesn't want to disappoint him, not when he's always had her six, not when he's always been there. He trusted her at once, followed without question. He believes in her. Everything else might shift on its axis, the fabric of the galaxy might rip beneath her, but she has never, ever doubted that. Him. She shouldn't keep him waiting. Not now, when it means so much._

Please, don't make me go back. I don't know what's real when I'm there.

_Sudden pain nearly sends her to her knees, but she knows if she stops it's the end. The ribbon-wrapped hand clutches at her side and comes away stained. With wine? No. No. That's wrong. _You did good, child. You did good. _Everything is wrong. It's blood. She can smell it, sharp and metallic. His blood smells different, a blue pool spreading too rapidly around her knees. No. That was long ago. Or not yet. She can't remember. She's not sure she wants to remember._

_What do you need me to do? _

_Keep going. _

_Is the rain real? Is the blood? The ribbon wrapped tight around her palm feels real, but so does everything else. Do the memories belong to her? Is she the girl sitting in the cupboard eating stolen cookies? Is she the girl whose night of stolen kisses turned to the loss of everything she loved? Is she the girl marking red 'x's on her calendar, or the one whose feet ache from dancing until dawn?_

_Is someone waiting for her, or has she imagined that too?_

_Ignoring the pain, blinking the water from her eyes, she pushes on. _Point me_, she thinks. _Point me at a target. And shoot.

_What do you need me to do?_

_A rustle in the trees behind her, and she knows she shouldn't look back but she does, twisting so quickly she nearly trips herself in her skirts, her hand reaching for her hip as though it expects to find a weapon there. It doesn't, of course. She brings her balled fists up, thumb curled over her closed fingers the way her father taught her._

_A woman stands on the path, and the rain doesn't seem to touch her. _

It's raining; it's pouring.

_Her white clothing is not damp or muddy. Her dark hair falls soft and dry about her beautiful face. She isn't smiling, but then her smile is rare and the more precious for being hard-won._

_Isn't it?_

The old man is snoring.

_A name forms on the tip of her tongue. It tastes of shared secrets, sweetness touched by shadow. It's a name that says _I know you. I know you better than you know yourself. I made you, once. We made each other.

_Before she can speak it, however, the woman takes a step forward. The mud doesn't seem to pull at her black boots, and it certainly hasn't left her dirty to the knees. She's pristine. Untouchable._

_She's still not smiling._

He fell out of bed and bumped his head.

_Her blue, blue eyes shimmer with tears. Or rain._

_She's never known this woman to weep, so it must be the rain. Mustn't it?_

_"I'm sorry, Shepard."_

_And then the woman in white brings a pistol up. She moves like a dancer, graceful and precise. Cool metal presses against her forehead._

And he couldn't get up in the morning.

_She understands it now._

_The bullet steals her voice before her lips can finish forming the word _why.

#

Garrus lingered in the medbay while Chakwas filled Brooks in. He hovered over Brooks' shoulder while she perused brain scans and made displeased little noises under her breath. When she hinted things might go more smoothly if her hands weren't bound, he ignored her.

He knew he had other responsibilities, and that outside the crew would be wondering what was going on and whether he had, as it seemed, lost his mind.

He wondered, just a little, if he had.

After a time, Samara moved to the medbay window and gestured; a few moments later the door slid open to admit Kaidan. The Spectre's eyes narrowed as they fell on Brooks, who only smiled one of her obnoxious little smiles. Samara sent a look her way and she swallowed whatever comment she'd been about to make. Then Samara moved to Kaidan's side and spoke softly to him, too quiet for Garrus to hear. Whatever she said brought flickers of blue biotic energy to Kaidan's closed fists, and the glower when he looked at Brooks again was even more pronounced.

Samara moved to Garrus' side, and laid a gentle hand upon his forearm. Gentle but insistent. He nearly protested, but some crack in her serene mask prevented him. She dropped her hand, heading for the medbay door, and he followed her.

She didn't speak at once. Indeed, she strode the path to the main battery without once looking back. He couldn't say the same. He glanced through the medbay windows as they passed. Kaidan had taken over Samara's watch, and Garrus could see his biotics still at the ready even through the faint blur of the glass.

As soon as the doors to the battery closed and locked, Samara drew a slip of paper from within her armor; it was still warm from her skin as she passed it into his waiting hand. She closed his fingers around it, her two hands firm on his one. "I did not read it," she said. "It was meant for you alone, and I would have given it over sooner, but it is better she know as little as possible."

"I don't know that she should be here at all."

Samara dropped her hands and turned a thoughtful gaze over his shoulder. "I believe you may be right. We have not left the planet's orbit, Garrus. I could take her back, if you wished it."

"What did Liara say? Exactly?"

"Only that she could not find Miranda. She spoke briefly with Jacob, but he was never a scientist, and knew nothing that might help."

"And he hadn't heard from Miranda, either, I take it?"

"Not since Shepard's par—not since before the final push on Earth."

Garrus shook his head. The piece of paper tucked into his palm burned. "You don't have to skirt around the hard parts for my benefit, Samara. Taylor didn't have any other suggestions?"

"None of the former Cerberus operatives he was in contact with ever worked on Miranda's project."

"Did he think of Brooks, or did Liara?"

"Liara found her name in a log of Alliance prisoners. As I gather, they spoke at some length. That is when she contacted me."

"And you agreed to play jailer. I'm still a little… no, scratch that, _a lot_ surprised."

Samara regarded him calmly for several moments before saying, "Liara is young."

When no further explanation came, he shrugged and said, "Isn't everyone, compared to you?"

She smiled faintly. "Indeed. I mean only that Liara's hope is the hope of youth. For all she has experienced and all she has seen, something of naiveté clings to her. It is, I believe, part of her charm. It will, I think, be a sad day when she loses it."

"And yet here she is, sending enemies into our midst. She's seen what Brooks is capable of. She must have had some pretty damned potent evidence. Or Brooks got to her."

Samara inclined her head. "Liara is convinced Maya can help. Perhaps she is right. Still, had I not agreed to 'play jailer' as you say, she would have sought someone else. Perhaps someone more malleable. Perhaps someone Maya might have manipulated."

"And your Code wouldn't stand for it?"

Samara closed her eyes briefly, and for a moment he witnessed the weight of her hundreds of years upon the smooth plane of her brow. "I… care for Shepard, Garrus. A great deal. When I was bound to her service, she never asked of me something I could not give. She could have abused my oath and she did not. I… owe her a kind of debt. Guarding her now is the least I can do. I would that I had been near to prevent its necessity."

"You and me both."

Samara's unblinking gaze turned shrewd, and he found he had to look away from the appraisal on her face. "And yet we neither of us are responsible for her current state. It would serve you well to remember it."

Garrus said nothing. Samara, damn her perceptiveness anyway, only shook her head. A little sadly. Tinged with an edge of disappointment. Her voice, however, held only the same calm certainty he'd come to appreciate. "I meant what I said, Garrus. I will kill Maya without hesitation if it becomes necessary. Hope is an emotion for the young, and I have not been young for a very long time. I will not be blinded by it. Do what you must to find those who have done this to Shepard. Leave Maya Brooks to me."

He held out the hand not holding the paper she'd given him—such a Shepard gesture, really—and after a moment, Samara raised her own to clasp his in return.

Garrus waited until the door closed behind her. He broke the seal keeping the little message unread, and unfolded the paper. He recognized his father's writing at once, the lines and curves of script far more elegant than Garrus' own. It took him a moment to recognize that on top of writing the words in turian, his father had coded the message as well. A variation on a C-Sec cipher, it meant the message within was one of utmost importance, and unparalleled sensitivity.

_Suspect Attus Klim connected to Admiral's office. No definitive proof. Consider channel unsecured. Level 8._

Level 8. Garrus swiped a weary hand down his face. The investigation into Saren had been a Level 8. It usually meant a high-ranking target, one with protection, one liable to disappear into the ducts and never be seen again if they were spooked before sufficient evidence was gathered. He didn't want to believe his father was implicating Hackett himself, but…

But Level 8.

"Crap," Garrus said into the silence of the battery, answered only by the hum of the Thanix.


	24. At the Violet Hour

For three days, nothing happened.

Garrus waited for the admiral to contact him. He waited for his father to find a way to send another message. He sent as vague and encrypted a warning as he could to Liara and waited with bated breath for her equally encrypted reply. She promised to be careful. She apologized about their still-missing mutual friend. She said nothing about Brooks, nothing about Hackett, and nothing about Shepard. Not that he expected her to.

He didn't trust the comms any more than he trusted anything else, and trust was in very, very short supply. He could only hope Liara was using the same caution.

For three days, he waited for Brooks to betray them. He waited for Joker to snap. He waited for one or the other of his restless crewmates to demand a return to Earth.

He thought about pointing the _Normandy_ in an unanticipated direction, hiding in the orbit of some moon, setting course for the edge of the system and just _going_ until they ran out of fuel, but practicality stopped him. Practicality and the desire for revenge. He couldn't fight a nameless enemy. Orbiting lazily around Mars, they were—as Shepard would have said—sitting ducks (whatever that meant; nothing good), but at least their enemies might deign to show up if they lingered long enough. And once he knew who they were, he could set about killing them. One by one. He could, after all, be very patient when it was required of him. Omega had taught him that much, and it wasn't the kind of lesson a person ever forgot. Ask Kron Harga. Or Thralog Mirki'it.

Then again, those men had been straightforward enemies. They'd left trails to follow. Leads to chase. Underlings and customers to… interrogate. He'd been the hunter and they the hunted.

He did not feel like a hunter now.

At the worst moments, Garrus even found himself longing for the simplicity of the Reapers. They'd been an impossible foe, hunters too big and too dangerous for any one little crew—any one little galaxy—to fight, but at least they'd been a known entity. Now he found himself stalking the ship at all hours, peering too closely at the faces all around him, wondering if he'd once again misjudged and allowed a traitor into their midst. Wondering if he'd be able to tell before it was all too late.

For three days, he avoided his sister. It was too hard to hide his struggles from her; she saw him too clearly and knew him too well. He tried to avoid Tali for the same reason. Tali, however, refused to let herself be avoided. He'd slip into the battery or the hold beneath engineering or even his own cabin only to find her there waiting for him, like she was keeping a pre-determined appointment, and he never quite had the heart to send her away again.

Tali never asked questions, though, and if she doubted his decisions she never spoke those misgivings aloud. She always brought food, and cajoled him until he ate it. Her conversation—when she spoke at all—remained innocuous and innocent. Tali didn't push. She knew when to let a subject drop.

She never mentioned the future, not even in passing. Her conversation centered only on the distant past, safe and familiar, played for laughs instead of melancholy. "Do you remember the time Wrex fell asleep in the middle of one of the mission debriefings," she asked, "and Shepard thought the most appropriate response was to headbutt him awake again?" Or, "The look on your face, Garrus, the first time we piled into the Mako and she took off. Keelah, I wish I'd thought to record it. I didn't even _know_ turians could look so completely undignified. I couldn't even be scared. I was too busy laughing at you."

Funny how a story about fighting for your life—or a krogan battlemaster snoring through a meeting, or allowing your commanding officer to drive—could be so amusing later when it most certainly had _not _been so at the time. (Except for the snoring. That _had_ been hilarious. Shepard had laughed off the bloody nose and Wrex and clapped her on the shoulder and said it took a real quad to poke a sleeping krogan. Thinking back, Garrus suspected that was the moment their working relationship had actually blossomed—like the blood from Shepard's nose—into friendship.)

Several times a day, Chakwas sent him irritated reminders to sleep. Sometimes he even did. On the third day it was from one of these restless naps he was awoken by the crackle of the comms in the cabin, and Joker's voice calling his name.

He was awake at once, already scrambling up from the couch, blinking the last of the weariness from his eyes. "Yeah?" he said into the emptiness of his cabin, the word echoing in the dimness. The fish didn't appear to care. In his cage, Odysseus squeaked. Probably meant he didn't care either.

"Doc wants you in the medbay," Joker said. "Think it's important."

"Shepard?" Already heading for the door, Garrus added, "Did Brooks do some—?"

Joker didn't let him finish, interjecting, "Probably best if you go yourself. You know. Quickly."

The silence took on a different quality then, and Garrus knew Joker had disconnected completely. He holstered the sidearm he'd taken to carrying since Brooks came on board. The elevator had never seemed so slow, and yet he found himself dreading what he might find. Joker's words hadn't given him enough to go on. Subvocals might've told him more. He braced himself for more setbacks, another series of disappointments. Chakwas was alive to ask for him, at least, so he supposed he wasn't about to walk in on a bloodbath.

As the doors opened to admit him to the crew deck, he let himself consider—just for a moment—how incredibly messed up he had to be to have _mass murder_ be pretty much the next possible thing on a list of likely complications. He covered the last of the distance at a jog, earning a startled glance from the single occupant of the mess, a young woman—Henderson? Hendricks?—nursing her cup of coffee.

Waves of tension assaulted him as soon as the door slid open, and he surveyed the scene the way he'd have taken in a battlefield, noting people and placements, friends and foes, imagining courses of action and the wisest use of the resources available to him. His pistol was in hand as soon as he recognized Brooks, the resident known hostile, standing behind a blue wall of biotics, not unlike the shield Samara had once wielded to send Shepard's team through the seeker swarms on the Collector base. Samara herself stood nearby, one hand outstretched and the other holding a gun also trained on Brooks. Even through the shimmering wall, Garrus saw surprise on Brooks' face. It even looked genuine. Not that he gave much credit to appearances anymore. Not with her.

Chakwas stood beside Shepard's bed, and didn't even look up when he entered. Shepard, however, did. His breath caught and he couldn't release it again, but the hand holding the gun didn't waver. The back of Shepard's bed had been levered into a partly-sitting position, and she turned her head as the door opened, red hair shifting to fall partly across her features.

Her smile took a moment too long to form. "Garrus," she said. Her voice, rough with disuse but definitely her voice. Like the smile, he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. He'd have sooner expected the bloodbath than an awake, responsive Shepard who appeared to recognize him and hadn't yet uttered the word _uneasy_. "Don't tell me… the one… let this sociopath back on my ship."

He didn't move, didn't even blink, afraid too loud a breath might break the spell or wake him up from the dream. He wanted to live in it just a little longer. Shepard didn't lift her head from the pillow, but one red brow arched at him, and though the look was familiar—it was all so damned _familiar_—he didn't trust what his own eyes were seeing.

_This is it, Vakarian_, he thought. _You've finally lost it. You're on your way to the place they hide turians who shame the Hierarchy by not being able to keep their shit together._

"What's going on?" he asked. His subharmonics gave the words a strained edge. Even to his own ears, he thought he should've sounded happier to see her. Shepard's smile slipped. "Was this Brooks?"

"You might ask me," Brooks said from within her prison of biotic energy. "I _am_ standing right here. And as much as I wish I could take credit for this little miracle, I didn't do anything."

"Be _quiet_," Chakwas barked, and somehow it was _this_, the whip-crack sharpness of the doctor's tone, that convinced Garrus he wasn't in the middle of some kind of elaborate hallucination. She sounded entirely too frazzled and entirely too concerned. She sounded like she didn't know what the hell was going on. Which made the both of them.

"I feel fine," Shepard said. "A little achey, maybe. I guess a woman can only break her legs so many times…"

Instead of laughing, Chakwas lifted her head and turned wide, disbelieving eyes Garrus' way. The gaze broke his paralysis and he strode to the doctor's side.

"I flatlined for a second," Shepard explained, still looking at him, eyebrow still arched, lips once again faintly smiling. Her tongue darted out to moisten dry lips. "And then I woke up. The good doctor's having some trouble with it, but Samara was here. She saw."

Garrus shook his head. "Shepard…"

In the same beleaguered tone, she replied, "Vakarian…"

He forced himself to look away from her, ignoring the protest as he stalked across the room and faced Brooks through the biotic barrier. After a quick hand gesture, the blue glow glimmered a final time and faded. On his periphery, the crackle of blue remained at Samara's fingertips.

Garrus was gratified to see genuine fear in the lines around Brooks' eyes; tougher to hide it from this distance. Tougher to mask it. He stood close enough to see her lips tremble as they clung to the characteristic smirking smile. Not quite so effortless. Not quite so cocky. Still, she lifted her chin and met him gaze for gaze. He gave her that much. Wrex would probably have said Brooks had a quad too. "Is this a trick?"

"Garrus," Shepard said behind him. He heard the warning. He didn't care. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones. It was the wrong feeling of Anderson's _I thought you should hear it from me. You deserve that much _and Sidonis' _Big Operation. More than I could chew, but nothing the two of us can't handle together. Like old times._

"I told you—" Brooks began.

He shot her. One bullet, just above her knee. Enough to maim. Not a shot to kill. Blood and flesh exploded from her leg, but before she could crumple he reached out and grabbed her by the arm. She was a small woman, slight, and it took hardly any effort to keep her upright, even one-handed. Her lips weren't smirking now, and although he was vaguely aware of voices around him, he had eyes only for Brooks' lying face. "What did you do?"

"You _shot_ me," she said through chattering teeth. Shock made her tremble; he only held her tighter.

"Yeah," he replied, glaring down at her. "And I'll do it again. So please, push me. What did you do?"

Brooks ground her teeth together and unwilling tears trickled from her wide eyes down her cheeks. "I'm not lying. I swear. I _swear_."

Shepard said his name again, and although every instinct honed in the past several years longed to snap to attention and follow her orders, he didn't. He _couldn't._ Too much at stake. Too much to lose. Something wasn't right. He needed to figure it out before everything went to hell.

"Doesn't mean much coming from you. Is she going to seize in five minutes? Is this some kind of moment of terminal lucidity?" He gave her arm a shake and though he could see her fighting it, she still cried out, her voice a high, pained whine. _There_, he thought. _Now that's honest. Finally._ "_What did you do_?"

"Garrus!" Chakwas snapped. "Stop this at once!"

He didn't know if he was heartened or disturbed that Samara _hadn't_ stopped him. Yet. A swift look in her direction revealed little. She was watching him closely, and her hands still glowed blue, but she made no move to disarm him. Or hell, kill him. She must think he was on to _something,_ at least.

"My leg," Brooks moaned. "My _leg._"

"You're in a damned medbay," Garrus snarled, pushing his face close enough he could feel her panting breath against his plates. This close he could smell the sourness of her sweat, fear mixed with the scent of blood. "You're not going to die unless I put a bullet in your head. Which I might do. If you don't start cooperating."

"Garrus." Shepard's voice had gone quiet, the voice she used when they were alone. _Shepard_ and not _Commander_. Without releasing Brooks, he turned his head just enough to see her. Her smile was gone, replaced by a tight-lipped frown and a furrow of displeasure between her brows. "She can't tell you what she doesn't know."

"What do you remember?" He didn't mean for the words to sound so harsh, so accusatory, but he couldn't modulate his tone, couldn't rein in the strange blend of fear and disbelief and certainty of imminent disappointment.

"Honestly," Shepard said with a very slight, pained shrug, "not much after we put this one away the last time. Rain. You said you had an order for me. Anderson... died. So did the Illusive Man. I said… I said _what do you need me to do _and I was pretty sure they needed me to die, too. I thought I did. I flatlined, the doctor said, and then I woke up."

"Nothing else? Nothing… you said I made you uneasy."

Her lips turned up, though the crease between her brows didn't completely disappear. "That doesn't sound like me."

He wanted to believe her. He did. But her gaze slid away from his at the last moment and though he couldn't put his finger on it, something was wrong with her smile.


	25. Winter Kept Us Warm

Shepard was patient.

She had to be. Impatient snipers didn't make their shots. Impatient snipers gave away their locations before their targets were neutralized. Impatient snipers were dead snipers. And Shepard was a very, very good sniper. Always had been. She still remembered the startled, incredulous look on her instructor's face the day the sniper rifle training started and she'd risen first to volunteer. She'd been too young and too pretty and still too soft about the edges from her life pre-military. She knew very well the picture she made. Her hands hadn't yet grown calluses, and her slender arms didn't look able even to lift a rifle, let alone shoot one—or so one of the smart-asses in the back yelled out. She ignored the insult. She was stronger than she looked; always had been. Stronger and smarter and more determined to succeed. While the instructor reprimanded the loudmouth, Shepard busied herself getting to know the most beautiful gun she'd ever seen. She took her time, checking every inch, learning the old girl's secrets. She was patient, and patience paid off. Maybe she didn't hit the bull's-eye, but she was the only one who hit the _target_ that day, and she was the only one who earned a nod and a gruff, "Back here at 0600 tomorrow," from the notoriously demanding, notoriously selective instructor.

She hadn't been a particularly patient child; her mother's beleaguered mantra of, "Patience is a virtue, dearest," was repeated—and never heeded—on an almost daily basis. She'd always wanted everything _now._ She wanted cookies _now_, not after dinner. She wanted to go to the park _now_, even though a rainstorm loomed. She wanted to kiss Brandon Deluca _now_, weeknight curfew be damned. Decades later, it still made her cringe to think of the tantrums and whining and petulant foot-stomping and door-slamming she'd subjected her poor parents to. They'd deserved better from her. They'd certainly deserved a little patience.

Her mother's lesson finally sank in the night the raiders came. _Blood and fire and blood and her parents and a kitchen knife stuck in an alien chest and yellow paint bubbling and peeling and skin bubbling and peeling and so much blood. _Patience kept her in the tree. Patience bade her be silent until the voices calling in the dark a couple of days later identified themselves as Alliance, and until she saw their human faces and blue uniforms and placating hands for herself. Patience kept her quiet and obedient while strangers with blank expressions decided what ought to be done with her. Patience was the _only_ thing that kept her from running during the two years she rarely spoke of, between Mindoir and enlisting.

Patience _was_ a virtue, and it had served her well. Much as she might wish it had not come at so high a cost, it was a lesson she was glad to have learned. Trapped in a bed in her own ship's medbay, instead of shouting or demanding answers no one appeared to be in any condition to give, she put her patience into practice, and she turned her frustration to observation. It wasn't much, but she could at least begin to piece together the puzzle if she paid very close attention to the pieces.

Chakwas—yellowed bruises about the eyes, moving slowly and favoring her left arm—sedated Brooks, ordered Garrus from the room, and turned her attention to fixing the mess he'd left in his wake. Shepard almost spoke then, almost asked Garrus to stay behind and talk to her—she hadn't seen this side of him since the mess with Harkin and Sidonis, and that he wouldn't quite meet her eyes was disconcerting as hell—but the doctor's tone as she asked him to leave was strained and tinged with more than a little desperation. At the door, Garrus sent a last look over his shoulder, but Shepard couldn't quite read his expression. Familiarity pricked at her. She didn't know what he was saying, but it was definitely a look she'd seen before. She just couldn't place it. She parted her lips to ask—beg?—him to remain but was halted by Samara's cool fingers on the back of her hand. Startled, Shepard turned. Samara gave an almost-imperceptible shake of her head, and by the time Shepard glanced toward the door again, Garrus was gone.

A few moments later, the door opened and Kaidan dashed in, skidding to a halt as he took in the scene. She saw him notice the blood first, "What the—" and then Chakwas bent over Brooks' prostrate form, "Garrus said you needed—" and then her, "_Shepard_?"

"Kaidan," she greeted.

She was aiming for pleasant, and even if she didn't quite make it, his response was still completely baffling. Instead of a smile or a hello, he looked as though she'd just shot a puppy or a small child or a hanar preacher in front of him. Nearly stumbling over his own feet, dark eyes wide, he choked out, "You remember who I—"

"Alenko," Chakwas barked, "I need your hands. This bleeding isn't going to stop itself. Bloody Vakarian. Samara, please—"

"I am watching the monitors, Doctor. I will inform you immediately should anything change. For now, all appears stable."

"You mean me?" Shepard asked, pitching her voice for Samara alone, but keeping one eye on the activity on the other side of the medbay. Alenko had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt—civilian, Shepard noticed, odd it wasn't a uniform—and was scrubbing his hands. Chakwas moved about the room, gathering supplies one-handed. "Are you expecting _instability_?"

"Evidently you were not yourself when you woke earlier," Samara said, just as quietly. Her eyes never left the bank of medical equipment behind Shepard's head.

Shepard swallowed. Heavy words: _not yourself._

_You said I made you uneasy._

"You weren't here?"

"I was not."

The asari linked her hands loosely behind her back, somehow at ease but not entirely open. Something about her expression remained guarded. Even more so than usual. Shepard frowned in response. "_What do you remember?"_ Garrus had snarled—_snarled_, at _her_. She'd assumed he was still angry about Brooks. Now she wasn't so sure.

If she hadn't been herself, who had she been?

Her head ached, and she almost asked for some kind of painkiller, but Kaidan cursed and Chakwas launched into a complicated explanation of what he needed to do, and suddenly a headache seemed like the least of the problems at hand.

"What _happened_, Samara?"

"No one knows for certain."

"But the Reapers—"

"Are no more. That much we do know."

She should have been surprised by this information—she had no idea how complete enemy annihilation could even be _possible_… had the Crucible fired? What the hell had it _done?_—but she wasn't taken aback in the least. Like a whisper she couldn't quite hear, a prickle of something like concern scratched at the back of her head. Or maybe it was doubt.

Maybe it was fear.

In any case, it and the headache did not get along. Shepard closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to remember. Across the room, Chakwas and Kaidan were working steadily on Brooks now; she listened to the soothing murmur of the doctor's voice as she directed Kaidan's hands. Every few moments he raised his voice in question, and Chakwas answered with unwavering certainty. _This vessel. That bone fragment. Yes, Kaidan. No, not that one. This needs to be cauterized; it's too badly damaged. Use medi-gel there. Steady, Kaidan. Steady._

Shepard ignored them. She remembered the rain in London; remembered the sound of the drops pattering against her armor, the feel of her damp ponytail slapping against her neck, the smell of ash—and worse—on the cool breeze. She remembered thinking she should've worn her damned helmet for a change. And then fire. Had something happened on the final push? Hadn't Garrus been injured? He seemed well enough now; perhaps the shout and the fire and the _smell_ were just echoes of nightmares. Worst case scenarios that had never actually come to pass. It was an easier thought to bear than the other. Stealth system or no stealth system, calling for a _Normandy_ evac in a hot zone with Harbinger looking on?

That seemed the more real possibility, though, the longer she thought on it; the terror that had driven her to make the call tasted of bitterness on her tongue and redoubled the pounding efforts of her headache. But if Garrus was healed now, perhaps she'd been out longer than she imagined. A week? A month? Her body was still injured even though her cybernetics—_even you are partly synthetic_—should've made short work of mere burns and broken bones. Hell, that final push in London had come mere _weeks_ after the _Valiant._ And she'd been fit for that duty; she was sure of it. Almost. A shiver of disquiet ran the length of her spine. She wiggled her toes beneath the blankets just to be certain she could.

Though her toes obliged her, she couldn't shake the feeling something was very, very wrong. It wasn't just the unwelcome return of Maya Brooks, or her own injuries, or the way Kaidan had looked at her when he entered. It wasn't even Garrus' temper or his willingness to shoot a… well, an _unarmed_ sociopath in cold blood. No, it was a deeper, more pervasive sense of wrong. Like the tip of a tongue probing at tender gums and the gap where a tooth had been, Shepard tried to feel out the holes in her memory and was met only with vague throbbing and the feeling of _absence_. Some things were clear: the rain, Anderson's slack features gazing at an Earth he couldn't see, her own hands slick with hot blood. The rest was a mess of images she couldn't make sense of at all. She had no idea what—_what do you need me to do?_—she'd done. No idea how long—_come back alive_—she'd been asleep.

"You could've stopped him from shooting Brooks."

"I could have."

"But you didn't."

"I did not."

Shepard turned her head and opened her eyes, arching one eyebrow. "Really, Samara? This is a game five-year-olds play to annoy each other."

She was rewarded with a small but genuine smile. "Forgive me, Shepard. I think it best to wait on the doctor's expertise in these matters. I beg only a little patience."

Sighing, Shepard closed her eyes again, listening to the hum and beep of the machines. The sounds were reassuringly steady. Without the distraction of speaking to Samara, however, her thoughts returned to Garrus. He'd all but ignored her when she'd attempted to order him to stand down; hell, it was almost like he hadn't heard her at all. And then he'd looked at her so strangely, as if he didn't recognize her.

Or didn't believe her.

Didn't _trust_ her?

This time the shudder was enough to bring an ache to her ribs and remind her pointedly of the still-healing clavicle. Samara's fingertips pressed her brow and the woman's thumb gently smoothed out the furrow there. "Rest, my friend," she said.

Shepard thought about protesting, _wanted_ to protest, but instead she only yawned and chased her missing memories into sleep.

#

When Shepard woke, Chakwas sat at her bedside instead of Samara. Or Garrus. Shepard tried not to be disappointed about the latter, but something of it must have shown on her face because the doctor's expression took on a very particular, peculiar cast and she said, "I'm afraid I sent him away."

It was a lie. Shepard _knew_ it was a lie. Her stomach twisted, but she forced herself to smile, forced herself to change the subject.

"What happened to your arm?"

If Shepard hadn't been watching so intently, she might've missed the way Chakwas stilled, like an animal afraid of a nearby predator. The doctor's answering smile slipped, turned brittle. "An accident."

"Some accident."

"It was—"

"Did I do it?"

"Shepard…"

"If it's all the same, I'd rather you didn't lie to me again."

"Yes," Chakwas replied, the single word curt and brisk and professional. It did nothing to hide the woman's distress. Before Shepard could apologize—something, anything—the doctor added, "It wasn't your fault. You—"

"Weren't myself. So I hear. Who was I? The kind of monster who attacks helpless doctors?"

It didn't sound as much like a joke as she wanted it to, and Chakwas didn't laugh. Quite the opposite. A deep frown creased her features, and she flashed a bright light into Shepard's eyes. She appeared to pass whatever test the doctor'd set for her, because Chakwas sat down again and folded her hands in her lap. "Tell me something, Shepard," she said, her tone deceptively conversational. "What happened on your eighteenth birthday?"

Shepard snorted. Her ribs ached in vague protest. "Is this a trick question?"

"I hope not."

"I hear a very loud _but_ in there."

"Answer the question, please."

Shepard's collarbone protested as she shook her head a little too strongly. "I enlisted. Hell, eighteen couldn't come fast enough. I was marking the days in little red 'x's on my calendar for weeks beforehand."

Chakwas' shoulders rounded and she seemed, in an instant, to deflate. She put her face in her hands, and if Shepard had been any more mobile, she'd have jumped up to offer whatever comfort she could. Instead, she said, "Karin. Did I say something wrong?"

Chakwas shook her head, face still hidden. When she looked up a moment later, her expression was calm but her eyes held the unmistakable sheen of tears. "No," she said. "No, that's precisely the correct answer."

"So what's with the—"

"I don't understand," Chakwas admitted. "I don't understand any of this. I want to believe you've had a spontaneous recovery—if anyone could do so, it is you—but if this is some temporary lucidity? If you slip away again? I don't know that he—I—_any of us_ could bear it."

"Oh," Shepard said, less a word and more a stunned stone falling from her lips. "It was… bad?"

"Very."

"And Garrus—"

Chakwas nodded. Shepard felt a knot of answering tears in the base of her own throat but she swallowed them down.

_Come back alive._ He'd probably also meant _come back yourself and not a doctor-attacking lunatic with swiss cheese for brains._

"We'll figure it out," Shepard said with more conviction than she felt.

Perhaps Chakwas heard the lie the same way Shepard had heard hers. "We will."

Still, her head ached and her bones ached and she thought of Garrus standing at the medbay door, looking back at her. She remembered the unreadable expression now, knew where she'd seen it before, but the knowledge only filled her with dread and the kind of grief that couldn't merely be swallowed away.

It was the same expression—cool and calculating and merciless—he'd spared for the clone as she fell to her death from the back of the _Normandy_'s hold.


	26. The Awful Daring of a Moment's Surrender

Shepard hated few things with the passion she reserved for her hatred of being bedridden. It didn't matter if it was recovering from a head cold or a gunshot wound (or, evidently, full-body trauma complete with amnesia), she wasn't a good patient. She was very much of the opinion that beds served a limited number of purposes, and lounging about 'getting better' wasn't one of them.

This particular recovery was worse than most, she found, because when she requested a datapad or an omni-tool, she was denied outright, and when she asked for visitors, Chakwas merely shook her head and went back to her work. Even a plea—command, really—for a sitrep was ignored, which might've made her angrier if the doctor hadn't looked so upset about it. Brooks remained heavily sedated, and Samara, deep in meditation, sat at the end of the other woman's bed, legs folded and body faintly glowing. Shepard wondered if it was some Justicar version of rest, since the woman seemed almost to be asleep, and yet she had no doubt that if Brooks so much as breathed the wrong way, Samara would be alert again. Shepard even thought about asking EDI to entertain her, but the AI had been strangely silent. She didn't think she'd heard EDI's voice once since waking, which had to be some kind of record.

Then again, maybe it was only that the doctor's full-scale quarantine extended to artificial intelligence as well.

Shepard mulled this over while she flipped idly through the copy of _The Odyssey _someone—Garrus no doubt, back when he hadn't been looking at her like she was some kind of Cerberus abomination—had left at her bedside. For once, however, she did not find the story soothing. She couldn't stop thinking about how very long a decade was. She'd been out, what? A week? A couple of weeks? No one would say, but it couldn't have been all that long. And yet the whole landscape of her life had shifted. How unfamiliar had Odysseus' world been, after ten years away from it? Uneasiness twisting her stomach into knots, she left Odysseus strapped to a mast listening to the sirens, and picked up the other book.

This was an even more curious choice, a battered old copy of Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass_. Turning the pages slowly, she wondered where it had come from. Her well-loved, dog-eared copy of _The Odyssey_ she recognized at once, but this was not a familiar book, and though Shepard was certain she'd read it in her childhood, she hardly remembered the story at all.

A child had scribbled colors onto the black and white illustrations with a careless hand, heedless of lines or subject matter. Sometimes Alice's hair was red, sometimes dark. Whole pictures were lost to angry black scribbles. None of the chess pieces were either white _or_ red. Still, with nothing else to occupy her time, Shepard read through it from beginning to end, and felt even more unsettled afterward than she had when attempting Homer. _Life, what is it but a dream?_ asked the final line of the poem that closed the book, and Shepard wasn't sure she could answer. Wasn't sure she _wanted_ to.

A nightmare, forgotten on waking, but leaving lingering anxiety in its wake?

Setting the book down, she opened her mouth to ask Chakwas if there was anything else she could read—hell, she'd tackle dry operating manuals or old mission reports or outdated medical journals at this point—but the doctor was folded over her desk, head cushioned on her arms, her heavy breathing almost a snore. Shepard tilted her head and cleared her throat, but the doctor didn't so much as shift. Neither, Shepard noted, did Samara.

Inhaling deeply, Shepard slowly lifted her shoulders. Her clavicle ached, but in a recently-healed rather than a still-broken way. A roll of her affected shoulder brought little pain and a bit of stiffness, but no actual protest. She smiled, giddy with success. After pushing the blankets away, she placed her palms flat at her sides next to her hips, and pressed against them, testing their strength. Here, too, her collarbone gave a twinge, but nothing desperate enough to beg her to stop. Exhaling, she shifted her hips back an inch, and then another. It took an eternity, but eventually she was sitting entirely upright, legs straight in front of her, torso willing to hold its own weight.

The doctor still slept. Brooks still snored. Samara continued to faintly glow.

Shepard frowned at her legs, moving her knees from side to side. Like her collarbone and the curve of her spine, they didn't feel entirely _normal_, but the pain wasn't devastating. She'd fought through worse, certainly. And hell, if they wouldn't take her weight, at least she was already where she'd need to be for treatment. She snorted a little laugh, knowing very well what Chakwas would say to that. It would involve a lot of swear words, probably. British ones. And a great deal of glowering. Bedside manner would go right out the airlock.

And still, the risk was worth it.

It took some maneuvering not only to lower the bedrail, but to extricate herself from the various wires and tubes attaching her to the nearby machinery without having them set off a plethora of medical alarms. At the end of it she was breathing heavily, her brow prickling with embarrassing sweat. Her heart raced in her chest as though she'd been running sprints in heavy gear, not merely trying to wrestle a medical cot into submission. Leaning against the raised backrest, she took slow, even breaths until her heart no longer thudded and her inhales no longer sounded akin to gasps.

Turning her face to dry the last of her sweat against the thin pillow, she saw the medbay door slide open on a soft hiss. She held her breath, waiting to see who was willing to risk the doctor's wrath.

No one entered. A moment later, the doors slid closed again and Shepard swallowed the bitterness of her disappointment.

Her resolve remained firmly in place.

With a little more force than strictly necessary, she flung her right leg toward the edge of the bed and nearly went tumbling over the side in pure shock when a voice—a flanged turian voice; a _female_ turian voice—behind her said, "Oh, I don't think you want to try that."

Shepard reached for the remaining bedrail and swung around with enough force to raise a real protest from her ribs. A turian woman in a wheelchair sat on the other side of her bed, leaning on one bent arm, expression caught somewhere between amusement and incredulity. Shepard opened her mouth, shook her head, and closed her mouth again. The turian's laugh was low and quiet and enough like Garrus' that Shepard would've recognized a resemblance even without the distinctive facial markings to serve as a bright blue clue.

"I've, uh, had a peek at your file," the newcomer continued mildly, almost as though they knew each other. Shepard let herself wonder whether this, too, was merely something she'd forgotten. But surely, _surely_ she'd remember meeting Garrus' _family_. "With fractures like those, there's no way your legs are ready to take your weight. You'll only break them both all over again and have to start back where you began."

Shepard blinked, cocking her head. "But where did you—I didn't see anyone come in."

The turian smiled, did something with her free hand, and vanished. Even without a visor to help her, Shepard was able to make out the faint shimmer at the edges of the tactical cloak, but only because she was looking for it, and only because she knew what she was supposed to see. "Nice," she admitted. "You modded the chair?"

The cloak dropped. "And you've managed to pull all your wires without tripping an alarm. You must be unstoppable with an omni-tool."

"Don't remind me." Then she leaned over the rail as far as her aching body would allow and extended her hand. "I'm Shepard. Sorry if I didn't greet you properly before. Evidently I wasn't entirely… well. You must be Solana. Welcome to the _Normandy_."

Solana perched on the edge of her seat and shook Shepard's hand once, firmly. Even though the turian woman's eyes weren't blue, something in their calculating expression put Shepard in mind of Garrus when he was trying to puzzle through a problem. "You don't remember meeting me?"

"Afraid not."

"But you remember… everything else?"

Shepard shrugged helplessly. "Evidently I don't, though no one's telling me much about the time I was out. I remember… parts of the final push, but nothing afterward."

"And—" Solana stopped abruptly, glancing around the room. Shepard watched her gaze sweep past the sleeping doctor and sedated Brooks twice before returning to her. "Sorry, you're _awake_ and my brother's not here? Does he know?"

Shepard tried to smile, but couldn't manage it. She was pretty sure whatever her face was doing didn't look like amusement. Fair enough. She wasn't feeling particularly amused. She only hoped she didn't look quite as sick as she felt. "I was planning the jailbreak for a reason. I figured if he wouldn't come to me…"

Mouth still slightly agape, Solana only shook her head. "Unbelievable. _Unbelievable._" Maneuvering the wheelchair until it was wedged between Shepard's bed and the one next to it, Solana pushed herself up onto her good leg, using a grip on the other bed's rail for balance. "Well, come on then," Solana insisted. "You can't walk, but you can take the chair if you think your arms will hold up?" Shepard nodded. "Good. Fine. I'll explain things to the doctor when she wakes." Solana sent a fond look over her shoulder. Shepard echoed it. Chakwas was definitely snoring now, each exhale pushing a fallen lock of hair away from her face, and each inhale pulling it back to her parted lips again.

"If she's pissed, you can always claim I stole it," Shepard offered. Her legs ached as she dangled them over the side of the bed, and she realized Solana was right: they weren't ready to hold her weight. Soon, maybe, but not yet. Still holding onto the railing for balance, Solana reached over and lowered the cot until Shepard only had to shuffle sideways into the wheelchair, supported by her arms. She wheeled herself backward and was relieved when her shoulder and collarbone seemed willing to accept the new strain she was putting on them. "She'd probably believe it."

Solana snorted a little laugh. "She probably would." Then she paused, giving Shepard another of those long, intense, unnerving stares she was starting to think of as Vakarianesque. "It's nice to finally meet you, Shepard."

"Likewise," Shepard replied, and was gratified when the stare shifted sideways into a genuine smile.

Strange, how affecting a _smile_ could be when it seemed an eternity since she'd last seen one.

#

It felt as incomprehensibly bizarre to sit outside her own quarters, hesitating before entering, as it had felt to glide through the hallways of the crew deck strapped into a wheelchair and hidden under a tactical cloak. Not, however, that there'd been many people from which to hide; evidently the _Normandy_ wasn't running with a full complement. She tried not to think too hard about what this might mean in terms of potential casualties. The mess was empty, and she came around the corner just in time to see Kaidan leave the elevator and stride down the hallway toward the observation deck. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself, unwilling to see herself carted back to the medbay before having a chance to speak with Garrus.

Before she could second-guess herself, she clapped her palm to the door's panel hard enough to make her already-abused shoulder throb in protest.

Garrus sat at her desk, back to the door, hunched over a datapad. It brought a smile to her lips to see proof of his presence scattered about on the surfaces. For months she'd told him to make himself at home—"My ridiculously oversized quarters are your ridiculously oversized quarters,"—and for months he'd slipped in and out of these rooms without leaving so much as a ration-bar wrapper behind.

Her eyes filled with tears she refused to shed when she saw all her fish were alive—even the stupid eel who scorned the VI's attentions. Odie was safe in his little glass box on the shelf behind Garrus' head. He squeaked when he noticed her and hid. Bless him.

"Not right now, Solana," Garrus muttered without looking up. He swore under his breath and for a moment Shepard thought he was going to hurl the datapad in his hands straight through her glass case of model ships. "I've tried every damned cipher I can think of. I've run every damned decryption program. And we're still no closer to figuring out the contents of the messages the _Empire_ sent. Or where they went. Or what they might mean."

"You know, if you'd fill me in and let me have an omni-tool, I could probably help with that."

Whatever reaction she'd been expecting it certainly wasn't staring down the barrel of Garrus' pistol with more than six and a half feet of bristling, enraged turian behind it. Without dropping her gaze, she lifted her empty hands. "Garrus," she said, "it's me."

"That's my sister's chair."

"It is. She let me borrow it. I was going to try and walk."

He lowered his gun, but didn't, she noticed, put it entirely away.

"You know me," she said, with a hint of challenge. His mandibles flicked; good, he heard it. "I'm patient until I'm not. And she did _offer._"

His mandibles flicked again, this time in irritation. "You're injured."

"And you're avoiding me. What did you expect me to do?"

He shook his head and settled back in the chair, spinning it so they were facing each other. Leaning forward, he planted his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between them. The right still held the pistol. She let herself consider how much effort it would take to divest him of it, but didn't act; right now, at least, he was faster than she, and she had no desire to see the muzzle of it pointed at her forehead again.

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. "Am I a clone?"

"No," he replied, too quickly, not meeting her eyes.

"But you're _afraid_ I might be."

It wasn't a question. He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

"What happened to, 'You're real. A little bit crazy, maybe, but real'?"

He flinched as though she'd struck him.

"Garrus," she said, not even trying to keep the plea from the word.

His gaze flicked to hers before dropping again; she wondered what secrets about her his visor revealed. Her heart rate was certainly elevated. Hell, he could probably _hear_ that much. Still he said nothing, and she had no visor to speak about his state. Even the language the lines of his body spoke told her little more than he was tired and he was sad and he would not let her help him.

Wheeling herself a little closer, almost close enough for their knees to touch, she leaned down slowly and wrapped her hand around the wrist of the hand still holding the gun. He tried to pull away, but she tightened her hold. Not enough to hurt, not enough for him to unseat her, but enough for him to realize she was serious.

"Shepard…"

Using her name was something, anyway. Not enough, but something.

Shoulder aching, she lifted his arm. His fingers spasmed around the handle of the pistol, but he didn't raise it. For a moment she thought he was going to drop it entirely. She kept her grip firm, unyielding.

She swallowed hard, trying in vain to moisten a suddenly dry throat. "If you think I'm—if I'm compromised, if I'm a threat to you, to the crew, to the _Normandy_—"

"Shepard—"

"We don't lie to each other," she insisted, cursing the way her voice broke on the final word.

He met her eyes then, and she almost wished he hadn't. The grief in his was palpable, a more visceral punch to the gut than anything a fist might have done in its place. She leaned forward until the gun touched her breastbone, the muzzle centered on the thudding heart beneath. One breath. Two. Three.

Garrus' free hand covered her gripping fingers before gently prying them away. Then he reached back and dropped the pistol onto the desk and turned back to face her again.

This time their knees did touch. And his hand didn't leave hers, his long fingers curled around her shorter, slenderer ones.

But grief and distress still thrummed in his subharmonics—even she could tell that much—when he said quietly, "The truth is? The truth is… I don't know, Shepard. I don't know."

"I guess that's a start," she replied, and for once didn't try to hold back the tears that fell when she closed her eyes.


	27. The Roots that Clutch

The tears startled him, but the way Shepard smiled a wry, self-deprecating little smile and scrubbed the back of her free hand over her damp cheeks undid some of the strangeness inherent in her letting him see her cry. Her expression seemed to apologize as if he—he, of all people—might judge her or think her weak for the momentary slip of the Commander Shepard mask.

It was so convincing. Like brightly-colored socks and stacks of buttered toast for breakfast, it was precisely what he'd have _said_ Shepard would do, and the expression was exactly the one he'd have imagined Shepard making.

It wasn't enough. His _I don't know_ hung between them, heavy with truth.

She looked like Shepard. Sounded like Shepard. The hand curled in his felt like Shepard's hand, right down to the familiar calluses and the slightly crooked bend in her first finger left from a break when she was young. Hell, underneath the too-clean, antiseptic medical stink, she even smelled like Shepard. If this face had never looked past him with blank eyes and said, "The turian's making me uneasy," he'd never have doubted. It wouldn't have occurred to him to doubt. He'd have believed it was Shepard as surely as he'd believed when he looked down his scope on Omega and, against all odds, saw a dead woman sprinting through a firefight toward him.

Much as it pained him to make the distinction—and Spirits, it did—_wanting_ to believe wasn't the _certainty_ of belief. He wanted to make a quip about this being the hell he was always threatening to follow her into, something about the impossibility of avoiding _just like old times_ even after wars ended and everything was supposed to be settled. In the weeks on that damned jungle planet, this was precisely the best possible outcome scenario he'd only let himself imagine when he was exhausted and alone and Alenko wasn't pestering him about closure and memorial services.

And he couldn't do it. Because in the back of his brain doubt scratched, saying _what if, what if, what if._

Shepard's fingers squeezed his briefly. Her gaze slipped down to look at their joined hands and touching knees. He watched the play of emotions across her face. Then she said, "I'm starting to understand, I think. I might not get the headshot, but will you let me shoot to see if I can hit the target?" Her smile turned sad. "One day I suppose we'll have to move on from the gun metaphors, but not quite yet." She lifted her eyebrows, her expressive human eyebrows he knew how to read better than any other eyebrows in the galaxy. Shepard's eyebrows. Shepard's expressions. Right now she was asking a question. His throat still hurt from speaking the last words, so he only nodded and tried to ignore the way his visor told him her heart was still stuttering along a little too fast. Not dangerously. Just… worried. The nerves she never let creep onto her face. Commander Shepard's poker face, best in the galaxy. Shepard's emotions just under the surface, bared to the visor. And his understanding of her.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the way she always did when she was gathering her thoughts or preparing to make one of her speeches. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This, he suspected, was not going to be a speech. This wasn't going to be _hold the line_ or _we face our enemy together, and together we will defeat them._ Neither of them knew who their enemies _were_. Hell, right now he was afraid _she_ was his enemy. Perhaps she feared the same, in reverse. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing people made speeches about. How did you hold the line against nothing more substantial than shadows and fears and whispers in the dark?

Her hand twitched in his, this time involuntarily. When she opened her eyes, though, she was composed and they were dry. The determination was all Shepard, too. Picture perfect. "The ship's not running a full crew. Your sister's on board, but not your father?" She raised this into a question and waited for the shake of his head before continuing on, "No one's in any kind of uniform. Kaidan's wearing civvies, for God's sake. I don't know if I've ever seen him out of Alliance blue. Everything looks a little battered around the edges, so I'm guessing the _Normandy_'s overdue for some serious time in dry-dock. Whatever mission she's running, it was important enough to send her out with a bit of a limp. Hackett?"

He nodded. Her eyes rolled and the very faintest of smiles pulled at her lips. "Yeah, well, when isn't it the good admiral?" She looked away from him briefly, through the glass case of model ships. Not seeing them, he thought. Thinking. "You've got the command?"

He didn't have to say anything. "Of course," she mused, almost to herself. "If Admiral Hackett knows _anything_—and he does—he knows how to play to the strengths of his subordinates. So, the mission was to retrieve me. Who else was he going to trust to do what needed to be done? I'd've given you the command, too."

Her weariness pained him. It was all too familiar, an echo of the Shepard she'd been at the end of the war, constantly drained and unwilling to rest for fear the rest would mean more lives lost, more failure. "Shepard."

Her eyes glittered as she swung her head back, and the line of her shoulders was tense beneath the medical gown she wore. The new scar pulling at the right side of her face only added to the fierceness. _How,_ he thought to himself, despairing,_ if she's not herself, how could they get her so right?_

"But that's when things start to fall apart," she admitted. "That's where I start treading water. I don't have enough information to make educated guesses, and without information I'm just taking shots in the dark. Liable to hit someone. And you know that's not how I work. First argument we ever had. Not taking the shot when the hostage might get hurt, right?"

Keeping his subharmonics as neutral as he could, he asked, "What exactly do you want to know?"

She snorted. "What _don't_ I want to know? I'm working at a real disadvantage here, big guy. I want to know why you're wound tighter than I've seen you since—in a long, long time. I want to know what code you're trying to break, and why. Hell, I want to know why you're wearing your backup armor instead of your primary gear. I want to know why you don't trust me." Her face didn't show the cost of these words, but her blood pressure did. His mandibles flared in sympathy. Regret, maybe. She sighed when he didn't offer any of the answers she wanted. "How long was I gone?" With a ghost of black humor she added, "Please don't say two years."

He huffed a breath caught somewhere between a gasp of horror and a bleak laugh. "The final push on Earth was two months ago. The _Normandy_… went down, after you did whatever you did. Spent a few weeks grounded. Headed back to Earth. Hackett sent us out again." _Things went to hell._ "We found you almost two weeks ago. You weren't yourself."

Her mouth twisted as though she'd bitten into something sour. "Seems like maybe I'm not the only one. What was that, down there? With Brooks?"

Garrus stiffened, parsing her words for accusation. He could tell she didn't exactly _approve_, but she wasn't calling him out or upbraiding him, either. "She had it coming."

"Garrus."

He ran a hand down his fringe and then scratched the side of his neck.

"Look," Shepard said quietly, "I don't like her any more than you do. I just want to know what the hell she's doing on my—the—_this_ ship. With Samara of all people on guard duty? How did that even happen?"

He tried to keep his face expressionless, but whatever she saw brought a deep crease to her brow. "You know," she said mildly, her conversational tone completely at odds with the hardness of her gaze, "I'm starting to understand how you felt when you were still with C-Sec, investigating Saren. _Classified_ is a bitch of a word when you're used to access."

She shifted in her chair, her knees knocking into his, and winced, putting her free hand to her ribs and running them lightly along her side until she could rub at her back. She'd probably been sitting too long, he realized; the bruised spine wasn't completely healed. She glared at him, as if daring him to comment on her weakened state. Wisely, he did not.

"Garrus," she said, quiet, almost tender in a way that made his stomach twist, "I wouldn't trust me, either. Don't beat yourself up about it." She pulled her hand from his and rubbed both hands up and down her arms before wrapping herself in a kind of solitary embrace. "If I'm… if I'm not _me_, then I'm some kind of sleeper agent. Or another clone. If I… you're right to be wary. I can't tell what I don't know. So it's better if I don't know much. You're doing exactly what I would do in your place. I can hardly fault you for it."

He was spared having to answer by the crackle of the comm, and Chakwas' voice ringing too-loud through the cabin, "Is Shepard up there?" No pleasantries, no preamble; she sounded frantic.

"I'm here," Shepard replied. "And I'm fine."

Garrus heard the lie and wondered if Chakwas recognized it, too.

"Garrus and I needed to have a chat," Shepard continued with false cheer. "He wasn't coming to me, so I figured I had to take matters into my own hands."

Chakwas muttered a handful of unintelligible swear words under her breath before continuing, "Shepard, you are not well. I must _insist_ you return to the medbay at once."

"Ahh," Shepard mused, "I'm somewhat out of the chain of command at the moment, Doctor. Ship's not running Alliance colors, and I may be mostly ignorant of the shit that's hit the fan in the past couple of months but I'm pretty sure I've still got Spectre status to fall back on. If it's all the same to you, I'd much rather stay here. At least until Garrus asks me to leave."

Somehow it was this—the idea that he might ask her to leave the space that had always been _hers_—that made him question his certainty. He was about to say she was, of course, welcome to _her own cabin_ when, tinny with distance, Solana's voice came over the comm. "I really would like my chair back at some point."

"Your sister's a bloody menace, Garrus," Chakwas griped. "She should know I'm of a mind _not_ to give her a new leg. God knows the trouble she could get into with full mobility. Of all the bloody irresponsible—"

"Hey, sorry, Doctor. I know berating me is important—and I do feel the sting of your disapprobation, I assure you, but… Garrus? Did, you, uh… one of these books came with Shepard from the _Empire_, right? The thinner one?"

"_Through the Looking Glass_," Shepard supplied.

"Yeah," Garrus added, glancing slantwise at her. Definitely Shepard's thinking expression. Tinged with something he couldn't quite name. "I assumed they gave it to her to fill the time, since they'd left her with nothing electronic."

"How closely did you look at it?"

He blinked, his mandibles pulling tight to his face. "I… didn't. Translation software doesn't work so well on non-electronic interfaces. Ran a scan to make sure it was clean and not rigged with micro-filament explosives. Or helpful DNA."

Softly, almost under her breath, Shepard said, "Only _you_ would think a book might be filled with micro-filament explosives."

Garrus glowered at her, and when she grinned, things were almost right between them. Then he swallowed and looked away. "Why?"

"Because someone's colored in the drawings."

"A kid who didn't understand _lines_," Shepard said, smiling. "Or staying within them. It's an aesthetic offense, but hardly a criminal one."

"I don't care about bad art," Solana said. "But if this was done by a kid, it was one who knew the turian alphabet."

"_What_?" Shepard and Garrus spoke the word at the same time, in very nearly the same tone. This time no smiles accompanied the glance of solidarity they shared.

"There are definitely turian letters hidden in these scribbles. They don't look anything like these human letters, and they're far, far too distinct to be some kind of coincidence."

"Words?" Garrus asked, already rising to his feet. "Numbers?"

"If it's a message, it's an encoded one. Except—damn. Garrus, you have to see this. I flipped the book, reading the turian way instead of human? The first word is clear. And it's _Archangel._"

"Take it to EDI," Shepard said. "I doubt she's limited by requiring an electronic interface for translation."

He didn't know if they were all caught too off-guard to speak, but the sudden silence was unbearable. Garrus was the one to break it. "EDI's gone, Shepard. She, uh, went offline when the Crucible fired. Haven't been able to get her back. Yet."

Shepard went pale. Colorless. For a moment, he thought she was going to turn her head and vomit; he watched her throat work, swallowing over and over and over. Her hands spasmed and she clutched at the arms of the wheelchair. All questions of trust and believability and veracity temporarily abandoned in the face of her distress, Garrus dropped to his knees beside her.

"Is she seizing?" Chakwas demanded, the intercom doing nothing to erase the panic. "This is precisely why she wasn't ready to—"

"No," Shepard choked out. "No, I'm—sorry. I… _shit._"

Garrus read out the biofeedback stats his visor gave him, more to soothe the doctor than because he wanted to speak them aloud. He didn't tell Chakwas how Shepard was shaking, or that her hands still clenched the arms of the wheelchair so hard the metal and plastic creaked. He feared her bones were doing the same. "Look, doc, I'll—I'm going to—I'll get you back on the comm if anything changes. Need some privacy here for a minute."

He heard Chakwas give her assent—reluctantly, he thought—but he was already focused entirely on the woman in front of him.

"Shepard," he murmured, putting a hand to her cheek and guiding her inward-turned gaze to meet him. This time her eyes weren't filled with tears. Ghosts, perhaps. The whites were visible around her entire iris, and she bit her bottom lip so hard the dry skin cracked and bled again. He was close enough to smell the faint metallic scent of it. Shepard's grief. Oh, Spirits, whatever else they'd done to her, it was Shepard's grief.

"The geth, too." It wasn't a question.

"You remember?"

She nodded. Once, twice. As though her head weighed too much for her neck to hold. He watched her age a decade in the space of a few heartbeats.

"I had to make a choice." Her voice sounded wrong, strange and disconnected, as though she were speaking after a very long illness and couldn't quite make her lips form the right shapes. Shell-shocked, maybe; he thought that was the human term. The turians called it battle-broken. Every protective instinct flared in him, begged him to beg her to stop speaking. And he didn't. Because right now she was Commander Shepard and this was a report he knew she had to give and he knew he had to hear. "They were…" She chuckled a mirthless laugh. "They were all bullshit. No reason to trust some ancient AI who'd, by its own admission, been screwing around with the natural order of things for cycle after cycle after _cycle._" She tapped a single finger to her forehead hard enough to leave a pink impression of her fingertip in its wake. "Manipulative piece of shit, too. Showed up looking like a dead kid. One of the last things I saw before—I _dreamed_ about—it doesn't matter. I didn't know what to think. Maybe that I'd finally been indoctrinated. Hell, I'd been shot. Bad." Her hand touched her side as though feeling the memory of that wound, that pain. "Thought maybe I was already dead. Remember being pissed I couldn't even die in peace, after all that." Her eyes lost focus for a minute; he brought her back to herself by dragging his thumb along her cheekbone.

After a rough moment, a shuddering breath—definitely no speeches here—she continued in the same numb, distant voice, "All the options were terrible, and there I was, watching thousands die, cruiser after cruiser, dreadnought after dreadnought, Earth burning below them. Massive viewports. Front row seats for the end of the world. End of the galaxy, I guess. End of everything. _You have to choose,_ it said. I almost shot the goddamned thing in the face, you know? But…" She brought one hand up to his, desperate as a drowning woman clutching at a lifeline. "I had orders. I had my orders. And my orders were always clear. _Destroy the Reapers_. Not… not… after all the things I knew, after all the things I _saw_, and they—it—whatever the hell it was—wanted to cut a _deal_? No way. No fucking way. So I chose to destroy the bastards even though I was warned it might… might affect more than them. Anything with Reaper code, I think. Synthetic life. It had all been touched by that code." Another bead of blood welled on her lip. She pulled it away with the tip of her tongue and grimaced. "Ruthless calculus, right? Kill ten billion here to save twenty billion over there? I—_fuck_. I hoped it was bluffing." Finger by finger she lifted her remaining hand from its deathly grip on the wheelchair. She folded both hands in her lap. He watched her rebuilding her armor piece by piece, out of spare parts and scrap. It couldn't hold. It couldn't possibly hold.

"Shepard," he whispered. "Are you—"

"No," she stated. Hard. Cold. Absolute. Shepard's certainty. "You're right, Garrus. I wouldn't trust me, either."

This, though, was _Shepard_. Wordless, he rose to his feet and took hold of her chair. The Commander Shepard mask betrayed nothing. Behind it, Garrus knew she was mourning.

"Come on," he said, heading for the door. "Let's see if we can't break this code."


	28. Perceived the Scene

Solana released her anxiously-held breath when the medbay door opened and her brother didn't enter alone. The relief, however, was short-lived. Human faces were still a challenge for her to read—all those malleable parts combined in a seemingly infinite and confusing number of ways—but Solana didn't need to be an expert to understand that the woman Garrus guided into the room wasn't the same one she had cheerfully loaned her wheelchair to in the first place. Nor, however, had she regressed back to the earlier empty-eyed amnesiac.

Solana rather suspected this iteration of Shepard—pale and drawn but with a set jaw and fierce fire in her eyes—was the Shepard of the newsvids and overblown myths, the woman who'd almost singlehandedly pulled the galaxy from the brink of destruction by pure determination and sheer force of will. Even hobbled and confined by injury, this Shepard was one Solana had no desire to cross. If even half the stories were even partly true, this was the Shepard who'd head-butted krogan, brokered peace between some of the most fractious races in the galaxy, and fought thresher maws and Reapers. On foot.

Strange, though, that the hero was the one who seemed loneliest of all, even with Garrus at her back. Solana supposed this was also the Shepard who'd made the calls that sent thousands—_millions_—to their deaths. Not a comfortable weight for anyone to carry. Even a woman as capable as Commander Shepard.

Even shuttered as he was evidently trying to keep it, Garrus' face was an open book to Solana, and everything she read there only confused her further. Perhaps unadulterated joy and reconciliation had been a bit much to hope for, but her brother—if possible—looked even worse than he had _before_. A hundred different proverbs attested to the indomitability of the turian spirit, but Garrus' expression proved even the most valiant warrior could meet with defeat. If Shepard's eyes were fiery, Garrus' were cold. They burned in a different way. A worse way. For a moment, Solana was convinced a stranger looked out at her from behind her brother's eyes and she barely contained the shudder that shook her spine, not holding her brother's gaze any longer than necessary.

Solana expected Shepard to take the lead, but the commander said nothing, leaving it to Garrus to cross the room and retrieve the book Solana still held clasped in her hands while the doctor, in turn, fussed. Shepard bore it stoically, even sparing Dr. Chakwas a brief smile. Evidently she passed muster; the doctor's examination was thorough but brief.

Garrus turned the book over once, twice, and as clearly as she saw his frustration and his distress, Solana now saw regret. And, more disturbingly, guilt. If Shepard hadn't been sitting so near and watching so closely, Solana would have insisted the oversight wasn't his fault. Hell, she'd have reached out and comforted him, not that he'd have accepted her comfort even if they had no audience at all. She couldn't even think of a joke or a quip to break the tension, so she merely folded her hands in her lap and waited for her brother's questions. Or rage. Both felt equally inevitable.

Garrus turned the volume until he was looking at it turian-style, reading top to bottom, right to left. She suspected he didn't even hear the low growl in his subharmonics as he saw the symbols spelling out _Archangel_ in turian script. Still Solana said nothing. Still _Shepard_ said nothing. Garrus flipped through the pages agonizingly slowly, pausing every time he spotted another letter or number. Finally, he closed the book again and shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. One word and a bunch of nonsense?"

"Code?" Solana offered, though the waver of uncertainty in her subharmonics said she'd had no luck breaking it. Garrus' expression darkened even further. "I thought maybe… C-Sec? Something I'm not familiar with, anyway."

"Codes," Garrus spat. Solana blinked at the virulence. Behind Garrus, Shepard closed her eyes and bowed her head, as though the violence of the word had reached out and struck her. Garrus didn't see it. By the time her brother turned again, Shepard's eyes were once again open and her chin once again lifted.

"Is it a message or a warning, though?" Shepard asked. Even the tenor of her voice was different—firmer, harder—and Solana's mandibles fluttered with surprise. Shepard glanced at her long enough to smile a very small smile that vanished almost as quickly as it pulled at her lips, and Solana was left with the uncomfortable realization that the human was far, far better at reading turian expressions than vice versa. "Perhaps your former identity's not _quite_ as secret as it once was, but it's still not exactly common knowledge. Either it's a friend who knows you—and knew Archangel—or it's a very well-informed enemy." Shepard's lips twitched again, quenching a little of the heat in her eyes with the briefest hint of mirth. "We have plenty of enemies, but most aren't particularly clever about it."

"Cerberus?" Garrus asked, grimacing. "Would it stand without the Illusive Man? I mean, well enough to organize something like this?"

Shepard lifted one shoulder and leaned forward, resting her forearms against her legs. Her limbs, to Solana's eyes, looked impossibly fragile. "The dog did have three heads."

"Huh?" Solana didn't realize she was the one who'd spoken until both Shepard and Garrus turned to look at her. She kicked her one good leg weakly. "Dog?"

Shepard didn't smile. A line creased her forehead. Still, her tone was patient as she explained, "Yeah. Old human myth. Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the Underworld. Could be the Illusive Man was only the centermost head."

Solana tilted her head. "Strange name for a human terrorist group."

"Not really," Shepard said. "It was the self-proclaimed guardian of human interests. Of course, speaking of Underworlds, Cerberus is also a prime example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. However they started, things got really dark, really fast." She scrubbed her palms down the front of her medical gown.

Garrus said quietly, "You used _them_, Shepard."

Even to Solana's untrained ears, the sigh Shepard uttered plainly said this was an old argument. "We used each other. It is what it is. Even—even without EDI, there's probably enough information in the ship's computer to attempt to run that code against anything of Cerberus' we had access to. They'll have changed up in the last year, of course—"

"But it's worth trying," Garrus finished wearily. "It's just… usually a cipher adheres to some kind of internal code, you know? Whatever this is seems… wrong, somehow. Backward. I mean, even aside from finding turian script in a human book."

Startling as a burst of summer rain, Shepard tilted her head back, sending a brilliant grin in Garrus' direction. Even he seemed taken aback. For a moment, Solana saw the ghost of the brother she faintly remembered in the startled openness of his expression. "Backward," Shepard declared, her voice as bright as her expression, almost laughing. "Of course. Garrus, I don't think an _enemy_ left that clue."

He rubbed his free hand along his neck and shifted his weight, almost nervous, from foot to foot. "I'm not following, Shepard."

"_Through the Looking Glass_," she said, still practically bouncing with excitement. Solana'd never seen such a swift change in demeanor; this Shepard wasn't the lonely hero. She was the clever tactician, the kind of giddy maniac Solana had always pictured her brother ending up with. Granted, she'd always pictured a _turian_ giddy maniac, but she wasn't about to be fussy. A little of the ice in Garrus' eyes cracked. Not completely, but enough to give Solana hope that her brother might completely thaw again someday. "It's _backward_," Shepard continued. "A looking glass is a mirror. Someone was counting on you and I working together." Strangely, this stole Shepard's smile, leaving her deflated again. "Or… or at least someone was counting on you working with _someone_ human. They took care to leave the _Archangel_ where you'd find it—"

"Except I didn't—"

Shepard shook her head, speaking over him. "You'd have seen it eventually. But it's a two part cipher. The rest of the message wouldn't make sense if you didn't have someone to translate the English for you. May I?"

Garrus dropped the book into her waiting hand; Solana didn't miss the way he was careful not to brush his fingers against Shepard's. Pulling her mandibles tight to her cheeks, she tried to make sense of his reserve, but found she couldn't. Later. Without an audience. She'd ask later. Although she had her doubts that he'd open up to her, even if she begged. Shepard's shoulders sank for a moment, and then she covered the slump with fevered movement, turning the book the human way and turning the pages. Lifting it, she pointed at a scribble. "This is the letter M. Stylized, maybe. Hidden, almost definitely. But now that I know what I'm looking for? Sure." She flipped a few more pages, pointing out other letters, and a couple of numbers. "On their own, they don't make sense. We have to make a list, see if we can marry the two sets into a cohesive whole. I have a hunch mirroring is going to come into it somehow. I want to guess that it's some kind of password. Maybe it's even the code you need to break the—"

"The code we need for the _Empire_'s messages," Garrus interrupted. Shepard nodded as he paced to one side of the medbay and back again. "Damn, Shepard. But… who?"

"Well, if it's Cerberus, it could be someone who agreed with me instead of the Illusive Man, but stayed in their place? Miranda must've kept contacts within the organization." Shepard snorted. "She might've burned the main bridge, but she always had a half-dozen other escape routes planned, I think."

All three of them jerked as the asari, Samara—Solana still couldn't _quite_ believe the woman was a genuine Justicar—spoke, "But Miranda is missing in action." The woman unfolded herself from her seated position at the end of the farthest bed. No part of her movement was wasted or extraneous; Solana couldn't quite swallow down the wide-eyed wonder. "Which is why Dr. T'Soni sent me, and my charge."

"Oh," Shepard said, pinching the bridge of her nose with the hand not holding the book. "That… makes a kind of backward sense, I suppose. Especially if you thought—think—I might be a clone. Brooks at least has experience putting a clone back together again."

"Brooks has experience training a clone to do her bidding," Samara amended. "I am afraid the two are not one and the same. As you appear to have returned to yourself, I fear I should remove her before she might cause more trouble."

Shepard's blunt white teeth bit down on her full bottom lip even as she shook her head. "We're not all convinced I've returned to myself."

"Garrus—" Solana began, without thinking, but Shepard was the one who stopped her.

"Not just Garrus. But even _if_ it were only him… I've had his eyes at my six for a long time, Solana. If he thinks something's off, then I trust his assessment."

The asari's expression was even harder to read than Shepard's. Solana couldn't make sense of it at all. After several long, silent moments, the bowed head was unambiguous enough. "As you wish, Shepard."

Shepard lifted her hands. "Garrus has command of the _Normandy_. I stand by that decision. It's his call."

They were interrupted by a brief crackle over the comm preceding Specialist Traynor's smooth voice, faintly harried, saying, "Garrus? Sir, I've… I've Admiral Hackett on vidcom. Shall I… delay?"

Shepard looked to Garrus. Hopefully, Solana thought. Her brother's expression had gone cool again, the ice hardening in his eyes.

"Give me a second, Traynor. A private second, if you can." The link cracked again as Traynor disconnected. Garrus glanced at their faces; Solana saw his eyes linger on Shepard's, clearly weighing some data points Solana didn't have access to. After a deep inhale and an even slower exhale, Garrus admitted, "My father suspects someone in the admiral's organization. Perhaps—perhaps even the admiral himself."

The fire kindled again in Shepard's eyes. "All the more reason to speak to him, then. He might be caught off-guard if he's not expecting me." She stopped, touching her fingertips briefly to her mouth before lowering her hand again. When she spoke again, her voice was deeper. Sadder, maybe. "If you'll permit it, sir. This is your call, too."

Her brother's subharmonics were painfully strained as he said, "Shepard… you don't have to—"

"You really should have a rank, though," Shepard continued, almost blithely. If not for the way her hands clutched the wheelchair's arms, Solana might actually have been convinced. "Commander Vakarian? Captain? Or are _you_ an admiral now, with all those saluting generals? Admiral Vakarian has a nice ring. Almost as good as Primarch. Though I assume Victus still holds his seat." She wiggled her eyebrows strangely, but the gesture made Garrus laugh, so Solana figured it had some meaning she just really didn't understand. She wondered, though, if Shepard knew Garrus' voice well enough to hear the discomfort beneath the laugh.

"You're right about one thing," Garrus finally said.

"Yeah?" Shepard interrupted. "You that close to the Primarch's seat after all, Vakarian?"

He glowered, but with a hint of playfulness that made Solana's heart twist. "Definitely not right about that. You're right that Hackett'll never see you coming. If he's… if there's something going on with him, he might be surprised enough to let the mask slip."

Shepard's lips twitched. "Good cop, bad cop?"

Garrus almost smiled. So close. "Only if I'm the bad cop."

"Wouldn't have it any other way."

Garrus touched a few controls on his omni-tool. "Traynor? Let the admiral know I'll be right up."

"Uh. Just you, sir?"

"As far as the admiral's concerned, yes."

After a slightly too-long pause, Traynor said, "Understood, sir. Ma'am."

Shepard and Garrus exchanged a look. Solana couldn't read that, either, but she knew they spoke volumes between them. "Well," she said with over-exaggerated cheer, "I suppose that means you need to keep the wheelchair a little longer. I'll just stay here and work on breaking that code and being the hero, shall I?"

Garrus grimaced. Shepard smiled. And for a moment, Solana let herself pretend she didn't see the fire and ice burning them both from within.


	29. To Controlling Hands

**Author's Note: **Many thanks to all of you waiting so patiently while these last few chapters have come at less even intervals. Please don't think it's because I'm flagging; I'm merely away from home and have been begging, borrowing and _stealing_ moments in which to write. That said, I anticipate a delay of about two weeks before the next chapter will be ready. I'm not giving up on the story _at all. _That's a vow. You've been a really wonderful, dedicated group of readers, and I thank you for your continued support and your patience during this less-prolific time.

* * *

Before they left the medbay, Shepard again activated the wheelchair's tactical cloak. Physical sight, even augmented by his visor, revealed only the faintest shimmer on the edge of Garrus' vision where he knew she sat, and each time he blinked he had to reorient himself as his eyes said _nope, nothing there_ and his visor called his eyes on their stupidity. He pretended it didn't unnerve him to hear her disembodied voice emanating out from a spot that looked like just another patch of medbay floor and medbay wall. At least on the battlefield when she disappeared beneath her cloak her voice was always in his ear, and he was used to not seeing her. This was a little too much like the physical manifestation of that inner-Shepard voice who was never afraid to call him on his bullshit, except this time he was pretty sure Solana and Samara and Dr. Chakwas all heard Shepard say, "Better this way. Rather not have to explain things to every member of the crew we pass. Especially if we're not yet certain exactly what to say."

The words held no hint of accusation, though he couldn't say they weren't tinged with resignation. Again the strange double-sided blade—doubt on one edge and his unwavering belief in the owner of that voice the other—twisted in his gut. On the one hand, he wanted to insist she didn't need to hide from her own people; on the other, from a logical standpoint her caution was entirely justified. Hope was potent. Hope snatched away after being offered too soon was so much worse than no hope at all. It was a lesson he'd learned all too well.

Garrus caught himself uncomfortably shifting his weight from left foot to right and jerked himself back to stillness. He didn't need to see her face to know the expression it wore. Or the expression it would have worn, if she were indeed the Shepard whose skin she so effortlessly seemed to inhabit. One part wry. One part amused. One part concerned. Entirely Shepard. Hell. Maybe Brooks and her poisoned words were only that—something foreign, a cancer eating away at him where only belief ought to have been. Perhaps he was doubting where no doubt belonged.

Perhaps he was breaking the most solid thing in his life for no better reason than the most untrustworthy woman in the galaxy had told him he ought to.

Solana's gaze was hot on the back of his cowl—doubtless his sister hadn't missed the nervous shifting of his weight—and he swallowed his worries. For now, he would play it as though Shepard was _Shepard_, and not a very good simulacrum. One woman, confined to a wheelchair and content to keep herself hidden from her own allies, was hardly a threat. Whatever else she was could wait until better minds than his took their crack at puzzling it out.

To keep up the illusion of being alone, Garrus did not help Shepard by pushing her wheelchair. His hands twitched at his sides even as he calculated how much more damage—how much more recovery time might be added—by her struggling to propel herself along with still-healing wounds. "Stop worrying," she hissed, startling him out of his reverie. His mandibles ceased their nervous fluttering and snapped back to his cheeks.

Hastings was just entering the elevator as they approached, and when he asked her to take the next, she froze and blinked at him, jaw slightly dropped and eyes wide, as though he'd just requested she kill a defenseless infant. "I'm sorry, sir?" Beside him, Shepard's laugh was a wheezy breath. Imagining her pressing a hand tight across her mouth to hold in the mirth—at his expense, of course—he had to hold in his own chuckle.

Spirits, it was almost as bad as reacting publicly to the Shepard who lived in his head. Garrus shifted his inappropriate laughter into a scowl, Hastings stepped away from the door and swallowed her affront, and Shepard maneuvered around them both to enter the elevator. He felt the soft sigh of her passing, and coughed to cover the sound of her wheel bumping too-loudly against the wall.

"Sir?" Hastings repeated, tilting her head and lifting her brows in a decidedly confused manner. "Are you—?"

The door slid shut, ending her query before it could be spoken.

"Real funny, Shepard."

In the confines of the elevator the cloak shimmered and dropped and yes, sure enough there was the shit-eating smirk, just barely covering the lines of pain etched into Shepard's brow. "I think I discovered a new favorite game," she mused.

"I think I just discovered I'm not above sabotaging your tactical cloak," he remarked in kind.

It was easy, too easy, to slip into the comfort of their old roles, the no-Shepard-without-Vakarian roles, quips and one-liners traded the way others shared caresses. The smile softening her features was the private one she reserved for him. Instead of the usual contentment accompanying the intimacy of her gesture, he felt only the sinking weight of _what if_. He couldn't figure, though, if it was _what if she's just back to her normal self _or_ what if they've engineered—trained? brainwashed?—a clone who knows how to play Shepard well enough to steal even this? What if I can't tell the difference?_

Shepard reached out and ran the back of her fingers along the back of his, so swiftly it could almost have been an accident. Then the elevator announced the floor, and Shepard vanished behind her cloak again without him having the chance to see the way her face shifted beneath whatever emotion had bade her touch him. He was almost glad of it. He feared that emotion would look too much like grief, like loss, like she was as aware of the breaking thing between them as he.

_And hey, how messed up is it that after everything she's been through, _she's_ the one comforting _you_?_

This time the voice in his head, clipped and admonishing, most decidedly belonged to his sister.

A veritable gang of consciences. Wonderful.

_Shut up, Solana._

Apart from a couple of techs working with heads bent together in the CIC who didn't even bother looking up as Garrus and the invisible Shepard passed, the cloak proved unnecessary. Shepard let it drop as soon as they entered the passage to the war room. Pausing beneath the darkened arch of the scanner, she tilted her head and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. "Weird," she said, her tone uncharacteristically distracted. "I guess… weird."

"Shepard?"

Lifting her shoulders in a shrug, she reached out and laid the flat of her hand against the scanner. "This is what makes it real. Isn't that strange? I used to wonder if Westmoreland and Campbell ever slept. They must've logged a ridiculous number of hours manning this stupid thing. Never saw anyone else down here, no matter what part of the day cycle we were on." She shook her head as though trying to rid her mind of a memory. The tense set of her brows and the paleness of her lips told him it wasn't a pleasant one. "Do you—where are they now? Do you know?"

"Both on Earth, far as I know. Maybe they were afraid if they volunteered for this mission, they'd be shunted back into this room to live out the rest of their careers." He smiled faintly, and lifted a hand to draw an imaginary, explanatory line across his brow across his nose to the corner of his mouth. "Westmoreland caught a nasty cut when the ship crashed and begged Chakwas to leave the scar. Last I saw them, she and Campbell were concocting ever more exaggerated battle scenarios to explain it. I didn't have the heart to tell them if they'd ever gotten close enough for a Banshee's hand to leave that wound, they'd never have lived to tell the tale."

Shepard snorted, turning her head to flash him a grin. He felt inordinately proud of being the source of that momentary mirth. "Who'd dare question it though? Story that crazy has to be true. Like fighting Reapers on foot, right?" Shepard dropped her hand back to her lap as if the scanner had stung her. Her smile died. "Remind me to see they both get commendations. Hell, after spending the whole damned war in this room, they deserve to move on to whatever they want."

Making a mental note to see those commendations given even if this—even if Shepard's word ended up no longer holding the clout it once had, Garrus took hold of the wheelchair's handles and guided her through the archway and into the war room. Here she said nothing, and her face remained resolutely facing forward, but the tense line of her shoulders spoke volumes. He found himself wishing her hair was pulled up in its usual tail, or even the knot she'd worn when he'd first met her and her hair had been longer. The loose red curtain now cascading over her thin shoulders, stark against the white of her medical gown, hid the back of her neck from him, and that neck was as eloquent an indicator of her emotions as her face, to someone used to watching her six.

He hated going in blind. Always had.

Before he could wheel her into the QEC, Shepard's hands dropped to the wheels, stalling their progress.

"Shepard?"

She lifted her eyes, and he didn't need a translator to understand the frantic thought happening behind them. "What do you think? Instead of good cop, bad cop, can we do… sneaky cop and forthright cop?"

He nodded thoughtfully. "You want to go in cloaked? Doesn't that break a whole chapter full of rules somewhere?"

She turned her palms up in wordless acceptance of his point, but the look on her face—her _I have a plan, Garrus_ look—only deepened. Intensified. "Spectre authority?"

It was his turn to snort, a sharp almost-laugh. "I thought we decided _I_ was bad cop. _Now_ you're all for abusing your Spectre status?"

"Sure," she said, and her casual tone couldn't completely mask the hint of uneasiness. "Everyone knows the best abuse of power is pulling the wool over your commanding officer's eyes. And requisitioning more than one's fair share of umbrellas in fruity cocktails."

He flicked his mandibles at her, confused. She waved her fingers dismissively. "Ask Joker sometime," she said. "Or… don't. I know everyone's still sore about the sushi place."

He caught himself before he blurted _Joker's sore about more than the sushi place, Shepard_. Something of his ill-conceived thought must have shown on his face, because Shepard's expression darkened. "Right," she said, answering some unspoken thought. "Admiral Hackett's solid. Unflappable." Garrus didn't argue with her, though he'd certainly seen the admiral uneasy. Emotional. Angry. _Bring her home. And if they've done anything to hurt her…_ Shepard continued on, oblivious, "I figure this is as good a chance to genuinely catch him off-guard as we're going to get. See what he wants. See what information you can get—"

"Shepard," Garrus murmured. "C-Sec. Years. I'm pretty familiar with the concept of _interrogation_."

She stopped, lips still parted to speak, and blinked at him. "Uh. Fair enough."

He shrugged. "It's worth a try."

Nodding, she reached for the cloak's switch. Before she vanished, he saw determination in the set of her jaw and the cant of her brows.

Entirely Shepard. Again.

When he entered the QEC, he didn't miss the way Traynor's eyes slipped past him, searching. When no one followed him in, her brows dipped into a disappointed droop that vanished almost as soon as he noticed it. When she spoke, her tone was crisp as ever, betraying nothing. "Admiral Hackett, sir."

"Thanks, Specialist. That'll be all for now."

Again Traynor's eyes scanned the empty room. For half a heartbeat, they hovered over the spot where his visor said _Shepard_, but then she merely nodded and departed without turning back again. Garrus activated his side of the call and the admiral sprang immediately to life in front of him. Settling into an easy parade rest, not informal enough to earn a reprimand, but not quite deferential either, Garrus remained silent, taking in the admiral's appearance, looking for anything like a clue. Hackett looked as implacable as ever, sturdy without being stiff and controlled without being severe.

"Vakarian." Hackett's voice was the same too, firm, steady and used to being obeyed. It held a shiver of query, almost the equivalent of subharmonics, as if the admiral wanted to ask the reason why Garrus was forcing him to speak the first words of their meeting but wasn't willing to actually voice his concern. "It's been a fortnight with no word from you. Any—how is she?"

"As she was," Garrus replied. Not quite the truth. Not quite a lie. Garrus could tell the admiral was clenching his jaw by the way the scar cutting across his face pulled taut. "It's been a fortnight with no word from you, either. Do you have new orders for us? New leads? Has our reluctance to return stirred any of the pyjaks out of the underbrush?"

The admiral's face blurred as he shifted, almost pacing. "Not as much as I'd like. Your father's been invaluable, but even his searches pull nothing but dead ends after an avenue or two. I don't suppose you have anything to add?"

Garrus ignored the question, answering with one of his own instead. "How do you explain his involvement? None of this falls within the purview of Citadel Security."

"And I'm not one to cut off my nose to spite my face. Kaius Vakarian's reputation as an investigator is unparalleled, and the Citadel no longer has need of its security. I, however, am happy to put his skills to use as an… outside contractor."

Garrus swallowed the snide _fond of outside contractors, aren't we_ he wanted to speak and instead said, "How's his clearance?"

Hackett froze, his clear gaze crackling even distorted by the QEC, obviously startled by the thinly-veiled importunity of the question. "Absolute and unimpeded." The admiral leaned forward slightly, as though physical action could close the incredible amount of distance between them. "Have you some reason to doubt my commitment to bringing Shepard's kidnappers to justice?"

_Level 8_, Garrus thought. _My dad said Level 8. If the trouble's not you, it's in your office. _"Did my father by any chance pass along a message, Admiral?"

"He did not. Though…" Hackett lifted his eyes skyward, as humans so often did when they were trying to recall something. "He did ask I keep communications brief and refrain from transmitting classified details. I believe he has some concerns about security. Expected, given what a shambles the entire system's in these days. May I ask to what these questions pertain, Mr. Vakarian?"

Garrus opened his mouth to speak, but instead Shepard's voice said, "I asked him to, sir. Reconnaissance. Always was a forte."

He glanced down. Shepard was visible now, and even chair-bound and clad in a medical gown, she projected the aura of complete and utter confidence. She made the wheelchair finer than any captain's command chair, and the white gown somehow transcended even her dress blues. Shepard's eyes never left the admiral, and Garrus remembered after a moment that he was meant to be looking for illusive cracks in a near-impenetrable mask and not admiring Shepard's ability to command a room with a phrase and the tilt of her chin.

"Shepard," the admiral breathed, the word a kind of prayer.

"Or at least a reasonable facsimile," Shepard mused with cheer as false as Hackett's relief was genuine. Garrus watched the man's jaw work, and realized he was seeing the admiral completely speechless for the first time.

After several moments of this, Hackett finally managed, "Come home, Shepard."

Shepard, however, was already shaking her head. "I'd rather not, sir. Not until—not until I can walk off this ship on my own two feet." _Not until we're certain I'm me_, Garrus heard loud and clear. "And perhaps it's best we not talk details at this juncture. When I'm ready. Not before."

It took guts—cojones, Vega would've said—to give orders to a commanding officer and make it seem like you weren't. Shepard did it effortlessly. Even made it seem like the most rational option of all the options on the table.

"Sir?" Shepard added, almost like an afterthought. Garrus knew it wasn't. "Can you relay a message to Officer Vakarian? From me? Ask him… ask him to keep looking. And when you're alone, ask him to confide in you. He might not. But it's worth the question."

"Shepard," Garrus began, "are you—"

She nodded once, sharp as a gunshot. "We'll be in touch, Admiral. But not through this channel, I think. Shepard out."

Because she had to wheel herself to the console, Hackett managed to get "Shepard, don't you dar—" out before she was able to terminate the call.

Garrus finished his question she'd earlier interrupted. "Are you sure?"

"Aren't you?" she asked. He bowed his head, admitting he was. He didn't miss the way her hands shook as she rested them safely on the arms of her chair once again. A little of her commanding persona crumbled and she sighed. "What a mess. What a damned ugly mess. I want some _answers._"

He scrubbed his hands down the length of his fringe and rolled his head from side to side, hoping for a satisfying crack and getting nothing but more aches. "That's what I've been saying for months."

"Reconnaissance," she murmured, almost under her breath, almost to herself. "Always something of a forte."

Her lips twisted. Not a smile. Not a frown. Determination mixed with disappointment, served up with a side of frustration and just a dash of hope.

Entirely Shepard.

_Entirely Shepard._

And oh, how it burned to be certain of _Hackett_ but not of Shepard herself.


	30. Your Heart Would Have Responded

Shepard wanted to be pacing. Not being able to do so was very disconcerting, and wheeling herself—even fiercely, with purpose—from one side of the room to the other simply didn't scratch the itch to move the way she wanted it to. She was also increasingly aware she'd have to give the wheelchair _back_, and she'd be once again relegated to her medbay prison with its kind, concerned, well-meaning warden. The itch flared up, twice as strong. It had been so good to be _herself_ again. In control again. Hackett hadn't doubted. Hackett hadn't questioned. And yet still, she wanted to be pacing.

It didn't help that Garrus was watching her with a sort of pessimistic hopelessness half-hidden in the hunch of his shoulders and the absentminded flutter of his mandibles. It wasn't even the pessimism that bothered her, not really. It was the hiding of it. She recognized mental armor when she saw it. Hell, she was an expert. She'd certainly built her own more than once. Really excellent mental armor. The kind it took armies to break. She'd just never seen Garrus arm himself against _her_ before. She was used to being the conquering force—or at least the successful military sapper—an _ally_, dammit—not the army blindly trying to conduct a successful siege without breaking anything in the process. She was so afraid of breaking things. Him. Them. Some fragile, unfixable thing she hadn't yet anticipated. She wanted victory, but not if she left ruin in her wake.

The war might be over, but cleanup was always just as dangerous. Peace didn't automatically disarm hidden land mines—or giant buried bombs, as Tuchanka had so eloquently proven. She didn't know exactly what lay buried beneath Garrus' walls, but she doubted it was anything as small as a hand grenade. They neither of them did _small_. Step the wrong way, and she was liable to blow them both into unrecognizable fragments of who they'd been before. The only trouble being, of course, that she had no idea what _way_ constituted _wrong._

Hackett's _come home, Shepard_ rang in her ears. Tempting. So tempting. What was home, though? Not Earth. Earth had never been home. Until she'd woken to find her entire universe tilted on an axis she couldn't quite make sense of, she'd have said the _Normandy_ and her people were the closest thing to home she'd known since Mindoir. She'd almost, _almost_ let herself get comfortable. Settled. Now, though? The _Normandy_ was swiftly devolving into a different kind of Mindoir. Nothing so overt as seeing her dead father sprawled in a doorway as the bubbling yellow paint of their house dripped and smoked around him, but a similar kind of loss nonetheless. Harder, perhaps, because it all looked so _normal._ She just didn't fit into the landscape anymore. She didn't think hiding in a tree would be enough. Rescue, she feared, wasn't coming.

Never had the old _you can't go home again_ adage seemed so cruel. _I never wanted to leave in the first place_, she wanted to protest. _It's not fair._ She suspected the plea would fall on deaf ears. Fairness was nice in theory, but so rarely worked in practice. _You've got to play the hand you're dealt_, she imagined her father saying. _And in real life, folding's just not an option. Not really. So you take that two of clubs and ten of diamonds and you run with it, baby girl, and you hope the river's kind._

_Come home, Shepard._ Semantics aside, she recognized the grief in Hackett's words, the hope. She'd have bet her life—was, perhaps, betting her life and the lives of the people around her—that no matter what else was going on in the mess left of his chain of command, his hands were clean. She could follow his order, she knew. She could return to Hackett's circle of influence, leaving Garrus behind his new walls, protected by his new armor, with the swath of deadly destructive ordnance buried between them. Unexploded, perhaps, but too present for true peace. Cut her losses. Chalk the last four years up to acceptable loss—ruthless calculus—and move on. If Garrus no longer hovered over her shoulder questioning her every move with wounded eyes, would she start believing in herself again? If she were surrounded by supporters, would she stop wondering how real she was?

_I don't want to talk about it._

How many times had she said those words while they raced through the Citadel, always one step behind her damned _Other Me_ clone, as her squad joked at her expense? And she hadn't. Talked about it. Not then. Not afterward. Not even to Garrus. She'd made jokes back. She'd laughed it off. She'd pushed and pushed and pushed herself all the way to the end without once stopping to think about how completely and unutterably _fucked up_ it was to have to look at one's own face and hope to hell there weren't a half-dozen more of you, hiding out in some Cerberus lab waiting to be turned out on an unsuspecting populace.

Hope to hell you weren't just the better, more-polished version of the same damned thing, with an understudy already waiting in the wings.

Maybe even now the memories she thought she had, _thought were hers_, weren't. Perhaps the period of disorientation—of not being herself—was some side-effect of too-rapid memory transplant. Or something. Equally horrifying. Equally irreversible. She should have stayed asleep.

_Folding's just not an option._

Swallowing hard, she swung herself around again. The damned room was too small. With each cycle of her arms, the chair covered too much ground. It was ridiculously unsatisfying, and she bit back the urge to scream or bury her hands in her hair or lurch to her feet and attempt the pacing she wanted, broken legs be damned.

What ifs rolled over and over each other in her head, a ceaseless cascade. What if they never found the answers they needed? What if Garrus was never certain of her again? What if she wasn't who she thought she was? What if this limbo was, in fact, her new reality? What if, what if, what if. A waterfall of what ifs. One of those huge roaring waterfalls she'd only ever seen in vids. Maybe Garrus' tropical beach retirement fantasy had room for a waterfall. She'd never particularly thought herself the early-retirement type, but she'd do it now. In a heartbeat. They could run, hide, relax, _forget_.

No. No. Flaws in that plan, too. Forgetting landed them in this mess to begin with. And Garrus no longer looked like he even wanted to be in the same room, let alone living a life of leisure on a white-sand beach—with a waterfall, the waterfall would be nice—somewhere. They needed answers. Not forgetting. Remembering. She needed _remembering_. And not stupid, useless shit like the exact number of guns in the armory—sixty-eight; damn that was a lot of weapons, and what the hell did she need three Shurikens for anyway when she didn't even _use_ SMGs?—or the way Garrus purred his pleasure beneath her when she jumped him that time after… Rannoch? Not Thessia, certainly. She'd been a mess after Thessia. No one had purred pleasure then. No. She needed the right memories. The right thoughts. Not these ones. She needed _answers_.

Only when she looked up again and saw the shattered expression on his face did she realize she'd been muttering some—or all, God, no—of these tangled thoughts aloud.

"Shepard," he said, and the low note of warning in his subvocals made all the hair on her arms prickle and rise.

Folding her hands in her lap to keep from anxiously propelling herself around the room yet again, she lifted her chin and met his concerned gaze. "Yeah?"

"You okay?"

She wanted to say _I'm fine_, but couldn't. She remembered that much. A promise not to lie about being fine. _As long as you promise to be honest with _me_, I won't tell anyone else when you're not fine _he'd begged. And she'd promised. _We don't lie to each other._ Instead, she avoided his question by sidestepping into one of her own. "Why?"

"You're a little—"

"Not myself?" she snapped, unable to stem the wave of sudden vitriol. She regretted it as he flinched. The movement was subtle. Not subtle enough. Exactly the kind of crack she'd been trying so desperately to avoid inflicting.

"I was going to say manic. And manic isn't usually how you operate. I… noticed it before, too. In the medbay. When you started thinking about the book."

The book. Of course the book. Tightening her hands in their death-grip hold on each other didn't stop her toe from tapping an uneven beat against the footrest. Her bare skin slapped against the metal. She wanted socks. _Needed_ socks. And a uniform. And her life back.

She had this. Memories she couldn't trust, questions without answers. All these little mysteries slipping like poisoned needles beneath her skin, so smooth and subtle. The kind that would kill her before she even knew she was injured. And it wouldn't even be the first time. Two months. Two years. God, but she was sick of dying.

She shivered and unfolded her hands, pressing her fingertips to her forehead, as if pressing could squeeze the information she needed out of her reluctant brain. The book was a message. The message was a clue. A clue was a lead. She knew that much. Of course she knew that much. Message, clue, lead. Answers. And socks. Her goddamned feet were cold. She settled her left foot on top of her right to stop the tapping. Her heart fluttered along as if to pick up her stilled foot's slack. Faster, faster, faster.

"Shepard—"

"Reconnaissance is the key, I think. We don't have enough information. The Kodiak's got limited FTL. We could send someone. I'd suggest your sister, to liaise with your father, but—"

"Solana should stay," Garrus said, and the strain in his subharmonics took on a different tenor. Desperation, maybe. Blinking, she tried to remember the last time she'd heard anything like it. _I don't know what to do with grey. _"Samara came on a ship with better range than the Kodiak."

She swallowed. If mania had a taste, it would have been bitterness on the tip of her tongue and in the back of her throat. She couldn't tell if he was agreeing with her, or just stating a fact she wasn't aware of. One of the thousand facts she wasn't aware of. "I saw Kaidan," she said, slowly, trying to feel out each syllable. "And Samara, obviously. Samara won't leave Brooks, I imagine. Nor, perhaps, should she. Who else is aboard? Tali? Liara? Liara might do."

Again the gates were lowered, the drawbridge raised, and Shepard was left on the outside of the fortress, desperately looking for a way in. Garrus didn't give her any. She'd pushed too far. Again. Stepped on his toes. Again. Turning his face slightly, he glanced toward the now-dark QEC. Then he sighed. Also pessimistic. Pessimism sharing a border with despair. He said nothing, mandibles stilled.

"I believe you!" she blurted before she think better of the outburst and stop herself. Cried, if she was honest. Her voice broke on the final word, went shrill and biting. Pessimistic sigh or not, his head whipped around and his gaze, startled now, found hers. She continued before he could protest, all the words she'd held just under the surface, all the words she'd tried to swallow for fear they'd make him even sadder, even angrier, even more disconcerted by her. "I _believe_ you when you say I'm not quite right, but I… _feel_ like myself. Do you understand? I don't remember the things that make you look at me the way you do now. For me, the last clear memory I have of you is that goodbye. That declaration of love I thought—yeah, I thought it—would be our last. Then I… I was asleep, and I woke up, and I didn't stop loving you. I've never had to hide it from you before. I've never had to pretend. I don't know how." She pressed a hand to her racing heart, and half-believed she could feel it trying to break its way out of her ribcage. "That's the truth. It hurts."

"Shepard…"

"No," she said, to forestall his… whatever it was going to be. Worry. Apology. Tentativeness. Dismissal, maybe. "I respect you." Her lips twisted in a bitter little smile. "There's nobody in this galaxy I respect more than you."

His exhale held a little keening grace note of pain.

"And because I respect you, because I _trust_ you, I understand things aren't… the same. For you. As they were. As they are. For me. And because of that respect, that trust, I want to believe your doubt is valid even though your questions aren't my questions, not really. I was going to die. I didn't. I woke up. And I want to kiss you. That's what I want. Answers to questions and a kiss. Your forehead on mine. That didn't change for me. That's never changed for me. I don't know how to stop wanting it."

When he dropped to his knees beside her, one hand holding the chair in place and the other darting to her neck, she thought he was going to give her what she wanted. But his look wasn't an ardent one, and his fingers were only reaching for her pulse, as if he didn't believe whatever secrets about her his visor revealed. "Shepard," he said, quietly, firmly, almost as though he believed it, believed she was _Shepard_ and not just _Other Me_. "Take a deep breath."

She was halfway through obeying him before she questioned whether she should. His hand against her throat made her heart race for an entirely different set of reasons, and the breath caught somewhere before the apex.

"We need to get you back to the medbay," he said, in the kind of even, soothing tone that could only mean his worry had skyrocketed from normal you're-a-little-manic levels to I'm-afraid-you're-going-to-keel-over-and-die-right -here-in-the-redundant-war-room levels. Shaking her head, she leaned away from his hand and took the deep breath he wanted. One. Two. Three. Her heart began to slow. Her thoughts began to clear. Garrus crouched beside her, head tilted with such concern it made her stomach hurt.

"I'm… better," she said, not lying. "Give me a minute. Just… please. Give me a minute."

"Shepard—" He sat back on his haunches, but didn't push. She could've kissed him for that. Could've. Couldn't, though. Instead, she closed her hand into a fist and brought it down hard on her thigh. He caught her before she could do it again. Her feet were still cold. Hackett still wanted her to come home. Everything was upside down and backwards, but instead of mania, she was left only with the sinking emptiness of failure and the certainty that this time while she'd been gone, someone had come along behind her and moved all the pieces and changed all the rules in the game she'd been playing. The life she'd been living. Her burst of energy spiraled away, like water down a drain. She wondered if she'd ever see a damned waterfall now. Probably not. Probably not.

"Please, don't make me go back," she whispered, hardly loud enough to count as speaking. "I don't know what's real when I'm there." With her free hand, she rubbed absently at the center of her forehead again. A monster of a headache was brewing behind her eyes, each throb as sharp as a blow, as a gunshot. _I'm sorry, Shepard._ An echo. A memory. A dream. The shock skittering across Garrus' face distracted her before she could ask herself who'd apologized, and why. "What—"

"I need the doctor to look at your vitals."

Her lips twisted wryly. Oh so bitterly. "Let me guess. I'm not myself." She shook her head, almost an apology, still feeling the burn of all those words in the back of her throat. "You're right, of course."

"Kaidan," he said. Explained. His fingers brushed her cheekbone, not quite a kiss but too careful to be anything but entirely deliberate. He rose and bounced for a moment on the balls of his feet as if to rid his legs of a cramp. "Tali, yes, but not Liara. She's on Earth. Better comms. Not that it helps us now, since this channel can't be trusted. She's the one who sent Brooks and Samara, because she couldn't locate Miranda. I don't know what—if anything—she's found since then. Jack and Zaeed. Grunt. Wrex insisted. Javik, because I think you might be the only living person he gives a shit about. Traynor and Cortez and Joker. Some other Alliance crew who volunteered. You'd know all their names. I'm trying. Mostly failing. Emerson and Edding aren't speaking to me, since I've mixed them up three times."

She smiled faintly. Garrus moved behind her and began guiding the chair back through the empty war room with all its silent consoles. "Well, they're both dark-haired."

"Yeah."

"…Emerson's a woman, though."

Garrus snorted. "I've got that now, thanks."

The chair didn't stop. Garrus' pace was even, and just swift enough to indicate that in spite of the jokes, he was still worrying. She put one hand to her throat and felt the stuttering, too-swift thudding of blood beneath her fingertips. When the door to the CIC opened and she reached for the tactical cloak's switch, Garrus said, "Don't bother. After the doctor clears you, it'll be time for your rounds, won't it?"

She crossed and uncrossed and recrossed her chilled ankles. Her legs didn't hurt quite so much. Maybe it was a good sign. For a change. "If you… if you think so."

"They're probably overdue." He cleared his throat. "It's time they saw you. It's… time you saw them. We'll… we'll deal with the rest. Just… just like old times."

"Sure," she said, her tone as vaguely uneasy as his. "Into hell, right?"

"Maybe out of it, this time."

"Here's hoping."

"Yeah," he echoed, "here's hoping."

Hope was a hell of a burden to bear. _I'm sorry, Shepard_, repeated the voice in her head. Not his. She wondered what exactly that voice was sorry for, but her head hurt too much to examine it closely. Later. Later. Not now, while things were looking up and the words _just like old times_ hung between them like a promise.


	31. A Game of Chess

By the time they reached the crew deck, all symptoms of Shepard's stress had faded, and Garrus' visor was once again displaying normal readouts across the board. It was almost enough to make him question what he'd seen, what he'd heard. Almost, but not quite. And though she seemed physically recovered, Shepard was as subdued now as she'd been manic earlier, and neither state was quite normal. She sat in contemplative silence as he pushed her chair out of the elevator. He imagined her half-curled into herself, gathering her forces, lining up the pieces of her mental army like the little soldiers on the chessboard in her cabin. He had yet to beat her at a game of chess. He suspected he wasn't about to start winning now.

Moving through the mess, they once again passed poor Hastings. This time, Shepard, uncloaked, lifted her head and sent the woman a friendly little wave. "Sorry about the elevator earlier," she said, her cheer so close to real even Garrus almost believed it.

Hastings gaped, nearly dropping her mug of still-steaming coffee, sputtering, "C-commander? But you—but what—but _how_—"

They were spared having to respond by the closing of the medbay doors behind them. Solana leaned back against a collection of pillows, still poring over Shepard's book in the glow of her omni-tool's interface. She lifted her eyes when they entered, rapidly typed in a series of notes, and let the omni-tool fall dark again. The book she closed and left on her lap. After her gaze flitted to Shepard, it remained steady on him, but for once she didn't prod or push or demand answers he wasn't willing—or able—to give. He knew they were there, though, just below the surface. Hell, he was even pretty sure he knew what they'd _be_.

Choosing to ignore his sister, and before Shepard could protest, Garrus explained—physiologically, at least; some things the doctor didn't need to know—the symptoms of Shepard's attack upstairs. Shepard's expression darkened with faint betrayal, but she let him finish speaking and then submitted to the doctor's ministrations without protest. When Chakwas had declared her as fit as she'd been before—with the heavy implication _not as fit as I'd like_—Shepard plucked listlessly at the medical gown she wore and send a wide-eyed, pleading look up at Garrus. It was so melodramatically pitiful he almost laughed. It was her _please, Garrus, I'm so nice and warm and comfortable here in bed, can you get me a glass of water_ look. Her _please, Garrus, my firing mechanism's jammed and you like your assault rifle better than I like my pistol can I please borrow your Widow_ look. His mandibles twitched.

"I don't suppose any of my things are still up there?"

He blinked, and without tamping down the surprise in his subvocals, said, "_All_ your things are up there. I wouldn't have—of course they are."

Relief passed over her face so swiftly he only recognized it for what it was once it was gone again. Her fingers twitched, almost like she was going to reach out for him, but at the last moment she only slid her hand under her thigh and sat on it. "Could I—I would _really_ like to get out of this… garment. If you can call it that."

She sent a similarly imploring look toward Chakwas, who only huffed a disgruntled breath and flung a hand up. "I'll have no peace from you otherwise. I'm familiar with this routine now, Shepard. I've rather learned to pick my battles, and goodness knows this is one I've yet to win."

Ahh, and there it was again, only this time it was a _please, Garrus, I'm desperate for some new clothes but I've been wheeling myself around all day and won't you run along upstairs and grab me something_ look.

"Uniform?" he drawled. "Or civvies?"

"The latter," she said with a pleased smile, and Spirits, but he still loved the particular warmth that accompanied pleasing her. "If Kaidan can leave his Alliance colors groundside, I suppose I'd better join in. But if you bring me that hideous orange jumpsuit… thing, I _will_ find a way to strangle you to death with it. God. I keep throwing it away, and it keeps coming _back again_."

Garrus snorted a laugh. From the corner of his eye, he caught the meaningful lift of Solana's brow plates, and for once in his existence he wished for a human's five fingers just so he could utilize one of Jack's favorite gestures and flip his sister off.

#

Shepard waited until the door closed, counted silently to ten to give Garrus time to get out of earshot, and then said, "How is he? Really?"

For once, she didn't attempt to mask her worry or downplay the urgency of her request. When Chakwas and Solana and Samara all looked at her like she'd sprouted a second head, she gestured vaguely toward the door and repeated her question. Even _more_ urgently. Didn't they realize how little _time_ there was? Couldn't they grasp the importance?

After a series of exchanged glances between the others, Chakwas answered first, holding her hands wide in a helpless shrug. "No lasting… _physical _ill-effects from his experience on Earth. If I had my way, he'd sleep for a week and I'd watch him eat three meals a day for twice that long before letting him out of my sight, but that rather goes for everyone aboard the _Normandy_ at this juncture. He's… medically stable."

"Medically stable," Shepard repeated under her breath. Damning with faint praise, indeed.

She looked toward Samara next, but the asari's serenity didn't budge as she said, a little ambiguously, "The burden of command is a heavy one, as you have every reason to know."

Squinting, Shepard asked, "And… so you… do you think I'm me, then? If I've 'every reason to know' as you say?"

Samara's expression gave so little away that the faint tilt of her head was a tell almost deafening. "I believe you are the Shepard I have always known."

"And yet? There's a huge _but_ hanging at the end of that sentence, Samara."

"The question Maya raised was not simply one of _recent_ clone replacement. She hinted rather heavily that you—that the Shepard whom Miranda healed and released on the galaxy—might also have been a clone."

"Which means even if you did your asari thing," Shepard wiggled her fingers at the side of her head, "you'd only be able to see that I'm… post-Lazarus Shepard. Maybe. Whereas…" She took a deep breath that failed to steady her racing thoughts, and considered Garrus' diagnosis of _manic_. "Whereas Garrus knew me _before_, before Alchera, before everything. _He_ believed I was _me_—me version 1.0, conveniently upgraded—when we met again on Omega, but if Brooks…" She closed her hand into a fist and wished for something to hit. Or for biotics. It would be_ tremendously satisfying_ to pick something—Brooks, maybe—up with her mind and just _hurl _it. "_Fuck_ Brooks. She plants a seed and that seed grows into a venomous plant that calls all sorts of things into question for him, not least of which is judgment he already worries might be impaired. And the last time his judgment was impaired… the last time he was _blind_…"

Samara nodded, a brief lowering of her chin.

Solana rubbed a hand along the back of her neck—a gesture so like Garrus' it made Shepard's stomach drop—and said, "Sorry. I think I'm missing a few data points here. Don't get me wrong—I think my brother's about as messed up as I've ever seen him, including the time he shot me. And he was _really_ messed up then."

Shepard blinked, shaking her head in stunned ignorance. Solana waved it away with a casual flick of her wrist. "We were kids, it was a stupid mistake, and it's a long story. Ask me some time when I've got a drink in my hands. _Don't_ ask Garrus. Twenty years later and he's still carrying it around like it's a mistake he made _yesterday_. But that's not the salient point. If you're the woman he talked about on Palaven, and the woman he followed into the Reaper war without once faltering or looking back, what does it matter if you started life as a clone? It's just semantics, isn't it? I mean if you're… if you're the _you_ he fell in love with? Was he—you weren't involved before, were you?"

Shepard bit the insides of her lips. "You mean when we were chasing Saren? No. Friends, though. We've… we've always been friends. He doesn't… he hates being lied to."

"Don't we all," Solana griped. "But you were never the one doing the lying. Not intentionally. Even if lies were being told. Hell, if the worst case scenario is actually the truth, no one was lied to worse than you."

_We don't lie to each other._

"Look," Solana added, with a touch of placation—perhaps even apology—in her tone. "He may be _medically_ sound, but I don't think you can divorce physical health from mental, and he's not firing on all cylinders right now. And I don't think he'd even bother arguing with me if he heard me say it. Which is actually… frankly, it's part of the problem. Finding you the way he did… I don't know. I can't pretend to know how it felt. It's just… I've been thinking, and I've been looking at all these disparate pieces trying to make them line up and make sense, and if I were a gambler? I'd bet there's a chance the amnesia wasn't meant as much to mess _you_ up, as to screw with him." Solana shrugged helplessly. "I don't know the enemies you've made. Or that he's made. I don't know who would want to hurt him like that, or you. This book you came with has turian writing in it, though, and he's the only turian you've been known to pal around with, so I don't think we're looking at a damned coincidence."

Shepard opened her mouth to speak, but caught the faint sound of footsteps and stopped herself. "I want a report later," she said quickly. "If EDI had been online, I'd ask for vid, but I want as much as you can tell me about how I was when you found me. Details. Details, I think, are important."

"Details are always important," Solana said, earning a nod of approval from Samara. Shepard echoed it. Chakwas looked thoughtful and retreated to her desk, and her console, and her endless stacks of datapads. Shepard only hoped something in there—in any of their memories, really—could help her start gluing the broken thing this situation had become back together again.

#

He had to admit, returning to the medbay once Shepard had time enough to enlist help to dress, she did look more like herself in familiar black fatigues, with her ubiquitous hoodie half-unzipped and the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her clothes hung on her a bit; she'd lost some of the weight she'd put on after their ordeal. She wasn't as thin as she'd been then, perhaps, but enough to unsettle him all over again. With her collarbone not up to the task of supporting her arms to reach up and pull her hair back, Chakwas obliged and dressed her hair for her. The ponytail was slightly off-center, but at least he could once again see the familiar, pale column of her neck, and read its silent language. Right now it said she was determined. A little tired. Mostly determined. And too thin.

He waited until the door closed behind them again before asking, "Do you want to call everyone into the conference room? Do it all in one go?"

"Hell, no." Her smile stole a little of the sting from her dismissal. "Conference rooms are for handing out orders and delivering stirring speeches. They have to listen to my orders everywhere else, and I don't think I have a speech in me right now, stirring or otherwise." She sighed, and he saw her force her smile a little bigger, a little brighter. "In their own spaces, the ones they choose, people are just themselves." Here her expression went a little glassy, a little distant, like she was remembering something in particular. Whatever it was, she didn't share it, and half-a-heartbeat later she merely shook her head and continued, "Knowing the _people_ is where it's at. I don't imagine I have to tell you that."

He wondered if the lesson she spoke of was in fact one he'd learned too late. Oh, sure, he'd known histories and skill sets, the dossiers of his damned, but the rest? He'd never talked to Melanis or Krul or, hell, even Naxus, his second in command on Palaven, the way Shepard talked to her people. Maybe he should've. Maybe he wouldn't have left so many dead left in his wake.

Whatever she saw on his face inverted her smile and left grim lines etched in the delicate skin at her eyes. "You're not me," she said. "And you don't have to be."

Without further explanation, she wheeled herself pointedly toward the elevator. She paused after a few feet and glanced back over her shoulder, expression inscrutable. "Coming?"

"Do you—" but he didn't know how to finish. _Want me to? _Need_ me to? Forget that this is something you've always done without an audience?_

She hooked a thumb at the chair's handles and lifted a challenging eyebrow. "Could use the help."

His mandibles flicked in the briefest of smiles, but he did as she asked. "Where to?"

"Joker," she said, without hesitation.

"Are you… he's—"

"I always talk to Joker first," she insisted. He didn't miss the undercurrent of worry in her voice. Good. She was right to worry, and he was glad, at least, she wouldn't be walking in completely blind. She tapped a fingertip to her chest, over her heart. Glancing at his visor readout, he was relieved to note her vitals were still steady. The strange episode in the war room had already begun to feel a bit like a dream, the echo of some old nightmare. Shepard continued, low enough he had to bend near as he pushed the chair to hear her, "Joker's the heart, you see. He's a smartass with an attitude and ego enough for half a dozen excellent pilots, but he's… I always talk to Joker first. Always."

In the elevator, she leaned on an elbow and looked up at him. "Want me to let you in on a little secret? It's good to know your people. Great to know them. Friendship's a good glue. Catch more flies with honey and all that."

He had a very vague recollection of that particular idiom from the Human Sayings and Their Meanings crash course Joker had once forcibly put him through, but he couldn't remember the last half, and Shepard was still speaking, so he focused instead on her. "But these conversations? They're not just _conversation_. They're a vital part of my tactics, Garrus. The same way Chakwas checks for fever. Hell, the same way you're constantly glued to your visor and its readouts, right? It's information. If I talk to someone and they're not _on_, if their head's not in the game as it were, they don't go groundside the next time out. If someone's angry or frustrated or upset, they get time to sort themselves out or cool off, and I'm not worried about them blowing a gasket on the battlefield." She held her palm out, and shrugged a tiny shrug. "But if you don't talk to them on their terms, on their turf, you might never _know_, you might never get to the heart of that problem, and then you're left holding a live grenade at the worst possible moment."

Wryly, he said, "I think I'm starting to understand why the only time I was grounded was between telling you about my lead on Sidonis and actually _dealing_ with my lead on Sidonis."

Instead of smiling or reassuring him, she laced her fingers together in her lap and stared down at them. "Scared the shit out of me, frankly. I'd never… I'd never seen you like that."

"You seemed… fine. A little worried, maybe. Not without cause."

Her fingers flexed and tensed. "It was more than that. I wasn't… it was a wakeup call, I guess. I knew something was bothering you, knew you were running ragged after Omega, knew you wouldn't _talk_ to me about any of it, but I was… hell, I was selfish. Yours was the familiar face, and I'd never wanted a familiar face at my back more in my life. I… broke my own rules. I thought I was going to lose you down there. To your demons, maybe. To C-Sec, if they caught a whiff of one of their former agents plotting cold-blooded killing on the damned streets. And then, when I put my nose in against your wishes and you were so _angry_ afterward, I thought my selfishness had come back to bite me, and I was just going to lose you up here in a different way."

He swallowed the bitterness; even now the ache of watching Sidonis walk away needled at him and made the restless ghosts whisper in his head. "We never did talk about it afterward, not really."

"We didn't talk about a lot of things," she said. Regretfully, he thought. Hell, they both had regrets on that score by the dozens.

"Still haven't."

She turned until her eyes found his, and without flinching, without blinking, she insisted, "We _will_."

This turn of conversation ended as the elevator doors opened. Garrus wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed. They stopped a couple of times while crossing the CIC for Shepard to greet members of her shocked crew. Emerson had tears in her eyes as Shepard shook her hand and asked very carefully about family back on Earth, but she practically glowed as she relayed happy news. Garrus wished he'd known to ask, wished he'd know how to make someone as cool and reserved as Emerson smile like that.

Maybe he could be a decent leader, a good leader, even. He certainly wasn't disparaging his gift for tactics and his ability to see eight ways a fight might play out instead of the usual person's one or two. But Shepard? She had a damned _gift_, and never was it more apparent than when Shepard sighed and said she should go, and Emerson, still glowing, left with a spring in her step. The tenderness with which Shepard moved pieces across the board was something he could not emulate. A person could love her as she shot them point blank, he thought, if she played things right before pulling the gun. They might even thank her in the end. Saren had done it.

It took some maneuvering to get Shepard and her transportation up to the cockpit—stairs really did seem like an unnecessary design stumbling block; he understood now why Solana had griped so vociferously about them. Shepard fiddled with her hoodie's zipper, up two inches then down two, several times before folding her hands in her lap and nodding her readiness.

Joker swiveled his chair as they entered. "Hey, Commander," he said, his voice breaking on the last syllable. A moment later he put his face in his hands, his shoulders rounded like a man expecting yet another blow from yet another unseen, unkind hand. Even from several feet away, Garrus saw the shudder convulse down his back.

"Hey, Joker," said Shepard, wheeling herself forward until their knees touched. "Heard it's been a rough ride."

Garrus couldn't tell if the man was weeping, or only trying very hard not to, but he decided it wasn't his place to watch, either way. Quietly, respectfully, he stepped back out of the cockpit. As the door closed, Shepard sent him a swift, grateful look, and for a moment—even amidst the questions and confusion and doubts—it was enough. It was _her_, and it was enough.

###

* * *

Author's note: My sincerest apologies for not being a better correspondent. Please don't take my comment-silence on the last couple of chapters personally; I just couldn't catch up with all my LIFE STUFF. Things are back to normal now, though, and hopefully I will be back to my usual gushing, grateful self. Thank you all for reading and commenting and theorizing. I appreciate your words more than I can say.


	32. In Memories Draped

Garrus stood at slightly-uneasy rest on the other side of the cockpit door, unable even to hear voices murmuring within. Good seals. At the peak of his paranoia, he imagined Shepard wresting control of the ship from Joker and heading in an unknown direction, all part of some plan he hadn't anticipated. He shook his head, disappointed with himself.

_Then again, perhaps Omega would have had a different ending if there'd been a little more paranoia in play._

Mandibles flicking in irritation, Garrus rolled his neck from side to side. "Omega was never going to have a different ending," he muttered aloud, into the silence of the corridor leading to the airlock. "Then or later, we were all going to die, and we knew it."

"Garrus?"

He turned, startled. He hadn't even heard the door open, though now the sound of it closing again was loud as a gun firing at point-blank range. Shepard tilted her head up, her brows curved down in worry. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her cheeks faintly mottled pink. In her lap, her hands curled, white-knuckled.

He didn't say he was fine. They both of them held their little lies close, because if they remained unspoken they weren't breaking the rule of honesty. Or so he told himself. He wondered if she made her excuses the same way. After a long, tense moment, Shepard sighed, and spread her hands out flat against her thighs. "Have I ever told you about Eden Prime?"

He blinked. "Shepard. I, uh, did read the reports."

"The classified ones? Or just the ones with all the important bits blacked out?"

He huffed a breath. "Fine. I'll bite. Eden Prime?"

"It was supposed to be a shakedown mission. I imagine that much made it into the reports you saw. Routine. New ship, new crew, new tech. But most of us were a bit skeptical, you know, since there was a Spectre aboard."

"Nihlus, yeah. He stonewalled me once or twice during my C-Sec years."

Shepard's eyebrow arched from worried to amused. "Maybe someday Samara will tell you about _her_ experience with him."

"Uh, Shepard, not that this isn't a fascinating detour, but—"

"Bear with me. Nihlus was there for a couple of reasons. To be the point man on the Prothean beacon mission, but also to evaluate me for the Spectres. All very hush-hush. The kind of need to know where the need doesn't happen until you're already almost eyeballs-deep in shit and you're guaranteed to be wishing you'd gotten in on the know a hell of a lot earlier." Her mouth twisted bitterly. "My least favorite kind of information loop, I might add."

Garrus didn't have the faintest idea where Shepard's ramble was leading, but it was, at least, some indication that yet more of her memories—of the old memories—were still in place. He didn't think anyone had ever explained Nihlus' presence on that fateful mission in so many words, but it didn't, he found, come entirely as a surprise. "Think he'd have given you the nod?"

Leaning back in her chair, she lifted her shoulders in a shrug. Easily, he noticed. Not even a twinge of the pain that had plagued her earlier. It was about time her Cerberus-induced powers of regeneration kicked in, so long as they didn't end with her seizing like the last time. He shook his head to rid his memory of those screams. Shepard, either oblivious or pretending to be, said, "Hell, I don't know. I'd like to think so. But the thing is, Eden Prime wasn't supposed to be the final test; it was, I think, just an initial challenge. I got the impression he was there to judge, yeah, but also to play mentor. Which…yeah. I got left to my own devices to figure out the Spectre thing; I think if Nihlus had been around, maybe that wouldn't have happened. As learning curves went, it was a goddamned steep one."

Garrus waited in expectant silence. Finally, Shepard leaned forward and planted her elbows on her knees, her gaze steady under serious brows. "Nihlus wasn't in command on that mission. A-anderson listened to him, sure, but Nihlus wasn't calling the shots. Unless, presumably, things went FUBAR. Then he'd likely have stepped in, commandeered the vessel, used his Spectre authority, and hoped to hell the human crew acknowledged its validity."

"All… right," Garrus said. His subharmonics held the question he wouldn't quite let himself ask. He didn't miss the way Shepard's voice hitched on her dead mentor's name—Anderson, not Nihlus—but apart from a twitch of a muscle at her jaw, her face betrayed none of it.

"I'd rather you didn't have the same steep learning curve I had," she said finally. "And I'm in no shape to command right now, even if I wanted to."

He chuckled, once, less a laugh and more a dubious exhalation. "So, what? You're going to put my name forward for the Spectres and this is my evaluation?"

She didn't laugh. Or smile. The muscle in her jaw jumped again. "Spectres aren't made, they're born. Or so I was told. It was something you wanted, once. Unless you've changed your mind?"

He shook his head slightly, almost without meaning to. "Shepard, this is—"

"A bit weird, I know." A fraction of the seriousness slid sideways into thoughtfulness. "And who knows how the politics of this war are going to shake out. I could be offering you a chance at joining a completely defunct organization." Here her lips turned up, half-smile, half-smirk. "In which case, timing's a bitch, right?" Turning her palms up, she showed her empty hands and shrugged again. "This is your show, Vakarian. I'm just along for the ride."

"Hardly," he replied, still trying to wrap his head around her words, her offer. "So. Do you… have advice?"

She cracked a grin and leaned back on one arm, the picture of ease. "Thought you'd never ask." She sobered just as swiftly, lowering her voice and casting a look over her shoulder at the still-closed cockpit door. "Don't leave him alone in there. That's my advice. I think Edding's got pilot training. Enough, anyway. Hastings, too." She shivered, closing her eyes a moment too long. "You and I both know what it's like, spending too much time alone with thoughts you can't stop and things you can't change. He'll fight it the whole damned way, but he needs the company." She paused again, and pained, added, "He's used to company."

Then, before he could reply, the strangest expression came over her face, somehow startled and pleased and wary all at once. "Incoming," she muttered. "And us in uncomfortable proximity to the airlock."

"Wha—"

"This is unacceptable." Javik snapped. Garrus turned in time to sidestep the angry Prothean's approach. Javik glared, death in all four eyes, and growled, "Why did you not come to me at once when she woke?"

Garrus blinked. He didn't think he was imagining the faint green glow the irate Prothean was emitting. "It's been busy."

Javik's sharp, cutting sweep of the arm was almost a biotic trigger, but at the last moment he halted himself. Definitely a glow. "Fool turian."

Javik stepped around him and turned his gaze on Shepard, who returned his fierceness with a bland smile. Garrus wasn't sure he'd _ever_ seen Javik voluntarily touch anyone, but the Prothean didn't hesitate now, settling the pads of his fingertips on Shepard's head, ever so slightly messing up her hard-won hairstyle. Shepard didn't wince, but her expression remained so still Garrus couldn't help thinking the serenity was a bit forced.

When Javik withdrew his hand a moment later, holding his whole arm a little apart as though it pained him, or like it was dirty and he didn't want to risk contaminating the rest of his body, Shepard opined, "Gotta say, the asari version's got a lot more fireworks."

"Bah. Humor. Always humor. It is a sign of weakness." Still, Javik didn't look away, and when he spoke again his tone shifted, pensive. "This does not make sense, Commander."

"Tell me about it."

Garrus heard the familiar sarcasm, but Javik evidently took it for a suggestion—or an order—because he held his tainted arm up and said, "You appear as you were, and yet… I do not understand. You were… broken. Some cracks remain. Yet the whole is familiar."

With faint, false cheer, she said, "I got better?"

"Another joke."

"Well, you did say I appeared as I was. I suppose that means the bad humor was bound to be part of the package."

Garrus had seen enough examples of Javik's distaste to recognize it now, although something of the wonderment also remained. He looked a little as though he wanted to walk in circles around Shepard's chair, taking her in from every angle. Instead he only tilted his head and blinked his four eyelids out of synch, so one pair of eyes was constantly fixed on her. "It does not make sense," he repeated.

"It's good to see you, Javik," Shepard said, this time without irony. "I wasn't sure I would. I hope you've decided the universe might have something to offer an old soldier after all?"

Garrus hadn't been privy to whatever conversation this was alluding to, but something in Shepard's posture and the almost-imperceptible answering flinch—_flinch!_—from Javik told him it was a serious one.

"Perhaps," Javik said, inscrutable. "And perhaps when the relays are again functional, I will… move on."

"I'm sure Liara would still give her left arm to collaborate on a book."

"Bah," Javik repeated. "The asari is confused."

Shepard smiled. "Maybe she's not the only one."

"You primitives and your endless words," Javik muttered. "I will be in my chamber. My hand feels of human." He took a few steps and paused. "I will think on this puzzle."

"My head's here any time you need to touch it," Shepard called out after him. Garrus couldn't echo her cheer; he still remembered with chilling clarity Javik's distress after returning from the _Empire_, and on the rare occasions Garrus slept long enough to dream, the words _thoughts of you remained clear longer than the rest_ kept him company in nightmares he wouldn't admit to having.

The altercation with Javik over with, the rest of Shepard's rounds seemed tame in comparison. Not everyone accepted her with the same teary-eyed willingness as Hastings or Emerson. Or Joker. Zaeed and Grunt seemed happy enough to see her. Grunt cried, "Battlemaster!" and gave Shepard the harrowing highlights of his part in the final push, a little like a child telling a parent what they learned in school that day. Zaeed told her a long, rambling story in which, for a change, no one actually died and everyone made it out alive. Garrus supposed that was Zaeed's idea of something happy, even though he'd described the dead batarians in rather excruciating detail. To her credit, Shepard managed to listen without looking ill.

Tali remained slightly more reserved than Garrus was accustomed to seeing her, but her words of welcome appeared genuine. The tilt of her faceplate found him more than once, and seemed to ask for a private conference later. He nodded slightly. He owed it to her. And he wanted to get her take; with their long-standing relationships, her input and Kaidan's would be invaluable.

Spirits, it seemed like a long time ago, barreling after Saren with righteous rage on their side. Now when he thought of that version of himself, it was with a sort of grim nostalgia. _That poor kid_, he thought. _All fired up. Didn't have the first idea what the hell he was getting himself into._

Jack, once she'd been called up from the hold—some places Shepard's wheelchair was never going to go, regardless of the importance of seeing her crew in their natural habitat—struck Garrus as particularly wary, perhaps because she'd been present for that initial moment on the _Empire_ when Shepard had been so utterly unlike herself. She didn't call bullshit, but her answers were short and terse and strangely devoid of expletives. For Jack. She kept squinting at Shepard, that odd gesture humans made when they wished to see something more clearly. Garrus wondered if it ever worked, and why. Finally, hands planted on her hips, she said, "Fuck, Shepard. Enough with the armchair psych. You're fine, I'm fine, we're all fucking fine," and Garrus wondered if that was all the endorsement Shepard needed. She smiled, anyway. That counted for something.

Alenko she saved for last, and Alenko she saw alone. This time when she emerged her eyes were dry, and her cheeks no pinker than usual. Her hands, moving the wheels, were steady. She looked, he thought, as resolved as he'd ever seen her. He just didn't know what she was so certain about, and he found himself unwilling to ask.

"So," Shepard said, when, instead of returning to the medbay, they made their way up to his—their—the cabin. "Who would you send?"

She glared at the stairs down to the little living area, her wheelchair poised on the top step as though she was contemplating just skidding down and hoping for the best. Garrus, with only a moment's hesitation, bent beside her and offered his neck for her arm. Shepard, with only a moment's hesitation, accepted it, and the slide of her bare forearm against the warmth of his neck made him shudder. If she felt it, she didn't comment. Likewise, he didn't say anything about the sudden flutter in her heart rate.

He didn't hesitate to sit down beside her, though not as close as he once might have. She didn't fling her legs over his thigh, or curl her spine against his side; he didn't run languid hands through her hair or dip his chin to nuzzle her face.

"You're not going to give me your advice?"

She twitched a brow. "Do you want my advice?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

She shrugged her assent.

Garrus' mandibles fluttered, then pulled tight. After a long inhale, he asked, "Why _did_ you let Alenko come back aboard? After the coup?"

"Two Spectres are better than one?"

"That's not the going philosophy."

She smiled, like he'd said the right thing. "You want to hazard a guess?"

He rubbed his neck, staring hard at the ground between his feet to keep from looking for answers in Shepard's enigmatic expression. "You don't always see eye to eye."

"I don't _always_ see eye to eye with anyone. Not even you."

He opened his hand to accept this, and then closed his fingers again. "No, I think that's _why_ you let him come back. He's honest. He's Alliance. And you trusted him to say something about it if you made a bad call."

When he looked her way, she was still smiling, but the cant of her eyebrows turned sad. "Actually, I didn't even need him to call me on it. All those conversations, you know." She tapped the bridge of her nose, and then the outside corner of her right eye, and then her shoulder. "Sometimes Kaidan's too Alliance to actually say anything, but his body language speaks volumes. The whole galaxy was falling to pieces, and… it was selfish of me, really. To say yes. He should have had a ship of his own, missions of his own, but I kept him on board as an underutilized backup moral compass." She sighed. "I suspect I owe him an apology, really, when it comes down to it. Except, of course, that he asked me and not the other way around."

"So you do think I should send Kaidan on Earth recon."

Shepard's own body language gave him nothing to work with. "I don't know. Jack's much more diplomatic than she used to be."

His mandibles flared, and he gave his head an amused shake. "Maybe Javik's right about the humor, Shepard."

Her responding laugh lurched into a yawn half-way through, and was followed almost as quickly by a mournful sigh. "I suppose that's my cue to return to the medbay."

He shifted to move her again, but once she was in his arms, he paused before returning her to the chair. "Do you—it's more comfortable here. The… bed. I mean."

She stiffened, but only for a moment. "I don't want to impose."

He held her a little closer, unbearably sorry for being the reason she sounded so sad and not at all able to find the words to tell her so. Her arm tightened around his neck. It only took a couple of long strides to bring himself alongside the bed—her side—and settle her lightly on the sheets. "I'll let the doc know you're here," he said, "and give my sister her mobility back."

"Garrus," she said, "I—I'm not, I think, the only one who needs a nap. I don't want you to feel—"

He touched his fingertips to her creased brow. "I… it's fine. I always sleep on the couch."

"Get some sleep," he said, reaching down to free her hair from its binding.

Her dark eyelashes were spiky with unshed tears. The tension in her neck told him she was trying not to lean into his hand.

Gently, he added, "And try not to snore."

Her lips curved with wry sweetness. "I think we both know who the noisy one is, Vakarian. You snore like a damned Reaper descending." He snorted and she opened her damp eyes. "Too soon?"

Before he could pull away, she reached for his hand and drew his palm to her lips. The kiss was unbearably soft, unbearably gentle, and over almost before he realized it was happening. She pulled away and closed his fingers, holding his hand in both of hers for a heartbeat longer. Then she released him. He kept his fingers closed, holding the warmth of her lips tight within his hand like a talisman.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He didn't ask for what, and she didn't offer further explanation. He paused at the threshold of the cabin, dimming the lights until the room was lit only by the blue glow from the fish tank. Shepard was a dark shape, slight and familiar. In his little glass box, the hamster meeped. Some of Shepard's clothing was flung over the chair, from when he'd been looking for her hoodie earlier. The desk was liberally populated by his datapads and one or two half-abandoned gun mods.

It looked like home. For the first time in months.


	33. Under the Brown Fog

_She is alone in the woods, except for the whispers. Always with the whispers. Sometimes it is Ashley's voice, sometimes Mordin's. Once or twice she hears the smooth velvet of Thane's, and as always this makes her long for his counsel, for the reassuring presence of him. _Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness._ Standing beneath the empty branches, she hears Legion's voice, mechanical and yet also full of emotion; Legion gave so much—gave everything—to see the geth live, and what had she done? Pointed her gun and shot. Sacrificed them all. Burned the whole goddamned place down, all souls aboard. The artificially intelligent ones, anyway. She waits, listening for EDI, but EDI's ghost does not speak._

_Some things are different. It's raining, the patter of drops soft against wood and fallen leaves. A roll of thunder sounds in the far distance, followed a few moments later by a crack of lightning so bright it blinds her until she can blink her sight clear again. Instead of her armor, emblazoned with its N7 and its red and white stripes, she wears a medical gown. The white cotton has gone translucent in the rain; it clings to her emaciated figure. She runs a hand down her ribs, feeling each as distinct as the bars of a xylophone beneath her fingers. She wonders what song they play. She suspects only dirges, only funeral marches and elegies. Laments for the dead. Fitting. Just. Her feet are bare, but at least they hold her weight. This strikes her as significant somehow. _

_No wide-eyed, tragic little boy appears for her to chase. She looks for him, turning slowly in a circle. Shades move through the trees. More than ever before. She dreads any coming too close; she is afraid she will recognize their faces and be able to put names to her failures. Without the little boy, she does not know how to choose a direction. She remains frozen and aching. Her head hurts. Her heart hurts. Her empty belly. Her empty hands._

_She does not cry. She is so careful never to start, afraid she might never stop again. And yet lifting her hand to her cheek, she finds it wet, and the wetness is warm, and when she puts her fingers to her lips they taste of salt._

_She almost jumps, almost screams, when a moment later a small hand slips into hers. It is very warm. She expects the little boy, even though he always runs and does not let her touch him, does not let her help. All she wants to do is help. The old pain sears. She expects they will start to burn, now. But when she looks down, a small, red-headed girl lifts huge grey-green eyes and grins at her. She is missing one tooth, and her face is framed by two pigtails curling slightly in the misty rain. Her other arm is wrapped around a purple jar much too big for her. "Hi," she says, her voice sweet and incongruous beside the whispers of the dead. "I'm not s'posed to be here. Can you take me home?"_

_The girl doesn't wait for an answer. She wants to say something like _you're not supposed to talk to strangers_, but for some reason this little fey creature with the big eyes and the missing tooth seems familiar, so she lets herself be tugged along the path._

_"Are you hungry?" the girl asks after half a dozen steps. "I have some cookies, but there's not many left. Mama has to make some more. I'm gonna help. You can have one if you want." She says this with the same air of magnanimity that a little queen might bestow a knighthood upon some worthy soldier._

_She shakes her head, even as her empty stomach rumbles its desire._

_"Did you know your dress is pretty ugly?"_

_This makes her smile._

_"Don't look up," the little girl warns. "The scared one is up there."_

_Once she has been cautioned, though, she cannot stop herself. Her gaze drifts up, and instead of the usual shadows, a very real girl crouches in the tree. Her long red hair is matted with sweat; her eyes are nearly feral with fear. One arm is wrapped tightly around a branch, but the other clutches a screwdriver. Most of the buttons of her blouse are undone. Even from this distance she can see the tiny trail of purpling love bites marking the girl from breast to neck. "Get away," the girl in the tree hisses. "They're coming. They'll see you. They'll see you if you stay there. They'll kill you, or worse. Did you know there were worse things than dying? I didn't. I didn't know."_

_"I'd offer her a cookie," the little girl says morosely, "but I don't think she'd take it. Don't you think she needs one? Mama always has cookies in the house, did you know? Just in case, she says. No hurt is too big that a cookie can't make it better." The girl tilts her head up, and the young woman in the trees draws back, spine arching like an angry cat's. "Maybe cookies aren't enough."_

_This time she is the one who tugs on the little girl's hand, though once they are safely away from the woman in the tree, the child once more takes the lead, turning them down a path crowded even more darkly along the sides with shades and shadows. She tries not to hear their voices. Tries not to put faces to them. Fails. Her hideous spiral of self-recrimination is broken only by the child holding her hand, who stops so abruptly she nearly stumbles over her._

_"Wow. Look at _her_ dress," the little girl murmurs wonderingly, with unabashed desire. _

_She looks. This young woman is sitting hunched over on one of the benches she has never seen used. The dress in question is a frothy confection of white silk and chiffon, spangled with rhinestones like starbursts, its layers ruffled even by the almost nonexistent breeze. Bent as she is, and long red hair fallen from its formal pinned-up style, she cannot see the woman's face. Her hands are pressed tightly against her stomach. A ribbon is wound around one of them; she thinks it once was pink, though now it is stained the rusty red of old blood._

_"Why is she sitting like that?" says the little girl, hugging her cookie jar close. "Is she hungry? Do you think _she_ wants a cookie?"_

She isn't hungry,_ she thinks with certainty, though she doesn't know where that certainty springs from. _She's dying. _She speaks none of these words aloud._

_The young woman on the bench lifts her face. A perfectly round little bullet hole marks her, right in the middle of her forehead. Almost innocuous, like an afterthought. She can't look anywhere else. "We died for you," the young woman rasps, her voice like screaming, like broken glass, a million times worse than any other whispers these woods have ever thrown her way. "We died for you, and what have you done for us? You don't even remember. You don't even _remember_."_

_Finally, finally, she finds her voice. Choking, drowning, she says, "What do you need me to do?"_

_"It's too late for that now. It's too late. We're not supposed to be here." The young woman struggles to her feet, stumbles, falls, crawls forward, the wound on her forehead oozing blood. "Don't you understand? We were never supposed to be here!"_

_Beside her, the little girl is sobbing, begging for her mama. Her cookie jar has fallen to the ground and shattered. Four little cookies turn to mush in the rain. Out in the trees, she hears the shriek of the scared one, trapped in her prison of branches. And still the one in the white dress drags herself forward, her eyes, her familiar eyes, her big grey-green eyes, unblinkingly fixed on her. She falls again, flat on her belly, and this time the attempts to pull herself upright and forward are met with failure. Cheek-down in the mud, the girl in the white dress mumbles _too late, too late, too late_ while the little girl wails, "I want to go home! I want to go home!" and the scared one in the trees screams her fear like a soul being murdered._

_The rain falls and falls. Thunder. Lightning reveals faces she doesn't want to see._

_Her empty hands are useless. She can't fix the cookie jar. She doesn't know where home is. She can't stop them coming. She can't stop worse things than dying. She can't help. She can't remember._

_She can't breathe._

_She can't breathe._

#

Shepard woke gasping, clawing at the sheets.

"A nightmare," she whispered. "Nothing real. Wake up. Wake up."

The lingering pain felt real, though, and lingering shadows danced behind her eyes. She remembered different voices, different screams, a different brand of terror, but try as she might, she couldn't place the sources.

Instead of a hulking turian in his usual place on the couch, the other current inhabitant of the cabin was Jack, leaning against the fish tank, slender arms crossed over her tattooed chest. Shepard spared a thought to wonder if the force of that glare had been the impetus for her waking. The other woman looked as volatile as ever she had when Shepard first pulled her out of the wreckage of the _Purgatory._

Blinking the last of her dream-confusion away, she dragged herself upright. Sleep hadn't diminished her persistent headache. "Where's Garrus?"

"Are you fucking with him?"

Shepard blinked again, lips parted in mute surprise. Jack, eyes narrowed, paced at the foot of the bed like an animal in a cage, waiting for the moment of inattention and the opportunity to strike. Shepard just couldn't figure out why Jack, of all people, would want to strike _her_. "I'm… sorry?"

"Don't give me that shit. I never had a thing for the bony bastards, but when you deal with cops out here, you deal with turians. I've learned how their expressions work, you know? Pissed on a turian doesn't look the same way pissed on a human looks. Neither does fucking heartbroken. And neither does bat-shit crazy."

"And you think… what? You think Garrus is all of these?"

"I don't think," Jack snapped, jerking an angry finger in Shepard's direction. _If pointing fingers could kill_. Except, of course, with Jack they _could._ Had she been using her biotics. Shepard was never more grateful _not_ to see a blue glow. "I _know_. What I don't know is whether or not you're fucking with him on purpose. If this is a con, it's pretty fucking long. But I've seen some long cons before, and this? This looks like one fucking _tailor-made_ to destroy him, with all the collateral damage of the fallout as bonus."

A little of her own ire rose at this, compounded by her immobility. The disparity in their heights and situations immediately put Jack at advantage Shepard didn't much care for. "If you actually thought I was running a con, would you tell me about it? Aren't you afraid of, I don't know, spooking me?"

"Be spooked," Jack snarled. "I mean, damn. You've got her down good. Even this thing you're doing now, this 'who do you think you are talking to me like that?' is fucking textbook Shepard. But I was there. I know what I saw. And it wasn't you."

Shepard sighed, aggrieved. "On the _Empire_, you mean. I told you. I don't _remember_—"

"Yeah? Want me to jog that for you?"

Before Shepard could protest, Jack flung herself down (Shepard stopped herself from shrinking away, but only through a massive force of will) and brought up the screen of an omni-tool. Voices materialized before the image did; Shepard recognized her own voice—her own voice, but _strange_, saying, _"I—sorry, the turian's making me uneasy. Do you think he could wait outside?"_

By the time Garrus, sounding as wounded as she'd ever heard him, replied with, _"I'm Garrus Vakarian,"_ the image was in place. It had obviously been taken by Jack's omni-tool; the view was of Garrus' back and Shepard sitting upright on a bed she didn't remember in a room she didn't remember, wearing the kind of expression she usually saved for people she had to be polite to but didn't care for very much.

Like a puppet wearing her face, the Shepard in the vid said, _"Do you mind, uh, Mr. Vakarian?"_ like she didn't know him at all. Worse. Like he he _did _make her uneasy. Like she was expecting him to turn on her. Shepard's gut twisted and she swallowed the bile that rose in the back of her throat.

"Oh, God," she whispered as Jack's voice, loud on the vid, muttered _"What the _fuck_?"_

Because of the angle, Shepard had a close-up view of Garrus' expression as he turned away. She put a hand to her mouth, and searing tears spilled from her eyes before she could will them away or blink them back. _What have I done to him? Oh, God, what have I done? _She didn't close her eyes, though, no matter how much she wanted to, and Jack's vid continued to run while, on it, Kaidan attempted to assess the situation. The woman on the bed who wore her face smiled at him emptily and asked inane questions Kaidan didn't even bother attempting to answer. The woman didn't seem to care. This struck Shepard as deeply wrong; she _hated_ being denied answers to her questions. This pallid version of herself only continued blinking and breathing and murmuring vapidly.

The vid only ended after Doctor Chakwas arrived and Jack was left on the other side of the medbay doors, followed by a team that looked as numb and shocked as Shepard felt now.

"See, that's one of the things with teaching kids; you get used to filming fucking _everything_. They always need to see what they did, after. Especially biotic kids, where the gestures count so much. And if they got hurt, we needed to know where, and how, and what hit 'em. So when we walked into that room and you were so fucked up, I guess it was second nature to just hit record."

"Thank you for showing me," Shepard murmured, her cheeks hot and wet with the tears that wouldn't stop falling. Jack pretended not to notice them, and Shepard found herself stupidly grateful for this small mercy. "I… don't… I don't remember any of that. I don't—_fuck._"

"Yeah, well it only got more horrible later. Like there was nothing _worse_ that could've hurt the bastard, you know? Basically you almost died at least once a day, and then you had this _bone-shattering_ seizure, and then you woke up like this. Good as fucking new." Jack shifted, reaching for Shepard's face with surprisingly gentle fingers. Shepard didn't fight her as she lifted her chin and stared long and hard into her face. "But you're either the best fucking actress in the goddamned galaxy, or you're telling the truth." The anger in her face didn't disappear, but at least Shepard no longer felt like the full force of it was directed at her. "I had to see for myself."

"I understand. I do." Shepard swallowed; it hurt, with the angle of her throat. "How did they do that to me? _Who_ did that to me?"

"If we knew we sure as hell wouldn't be sitting here with our thumbs up our asses, would we?" Jack blew out a heavy exhale and shook her head. "Doesn't matter. We'll find the fuckers, we'll make 'em pay. It's what we do, right?"

"Right," Shepard echoed. The strangeness of having seen herself on the vid combined with the leftover restless horror of her dream made her head ache. Even more. _Who's making who uneasy now?_ "Jack? You know… do you know the story of the Trojan Horse?"

"Bunch of idiots opened their door because they thought a giant fucking wooden horse was some kind of present and surprise! It was full of assholes who killed 'em all while they slept?"

Shepard nodded. "If I—if they—look, I want you to promise me something."

Jack arched an inquisitive eyebrow, even as her full lips drew down in an unpleasant frown. "Don't think I like where this one's going."

"If I'm compromised… if I do _anything_ to hurt this crew, this ship, innocent people, _anything_, I want you to promise you'll blow me up and ask questions later. Any means necessary." Shepard's hand closed into a helpless fist at her side. "I can't—I already—I've got a lot of blood on my hands already. I don't want to start adding to it. Especially if the woman on your vid shows up again. She's… I don't know who she is, but she scares the living fuck out of me."

"Now you're starting to sound like me. Leave the cursing to the professionals, Shepard."

Shepard didn't take the offered bait, and Jack's attempt at deflecting foundered and sank. "I trust you to act if it's necessary. That you came here today proves that much. Hell, I'm _glad_ you confronted me."

"That wasn't what I—"

"Promise me, Jack. Please. Or I'll preemptively take myself out. I mean it about having enough blood on my hands."

"Dirty pool, Shepard." Jack muttered, ducking her head. "Dirty fucking pool."

Shepard reached out, curling her hand around one of Jack's. The slim, well-inked fingers trembled. "You know what it's like to be used. You know I'd shoot anyone in the face who tried to do it to you again. So if I'm the one… if I'm the one being used? Put me out of my goddamned misery, and then kill every single one of the bastards who did it to me."

"Fine," Jack said after a very long pause broken only by the burble of the fish tank VI. Her voice was steely and resolved, and it granted Shepard a tiny measure of peace. "I promise."

"And don't… it's probably better if you don't tell Garrus about… this."

"Fuck, Shepard," Jack said. "I don't have a death wish. Much. Anymore."

"But after? If you… if there's an after? Remind him of the Trojan Horse. Tell him it's like the gift from Grixos. He'll remember."

"He won't thank me."

Shepard's lips twisted in a pained smile. "But I will."


	34. Went on in Sunlight

If she'd had both legs—and she _would_ soon, sooner even than she'd hoped, if what Doctor Chakwas had just told her was true—Solana would've had a bounce in her step as she made her way from the medbay to the elevator. As it was, she contented herself with swinging her arms a little more exuberantly than usual as she wheeled her chair down the hall. The burst of speed nearly sent her careening into one of the shocked human crew members, and she grinned as she skidded to an abrupt halt and offered a meek apology. The man's face contorted in one of the strange human expressions Solana didn't recognize before he moved away in the opposite direction. Fear? Uneasiness? It didn't matter. She was going to have _legs_, plural, again.

Her good mood faltered somewhat when the door slid open and she maneuvered herself into an eerily quiet shuttle bay. Major Alenko looked up from the weaponry workbench and lifted his eyebrows. She was trying to parse the meaning of it—nowhere _near_ that mobile, turian browplates were therefore used to punctuate far fewer variations in emotion, whereas humans were constantly wiggling their furry brows—when he said, "Sorry. You just missed your brother. I think he was headed to the cockpit. You might be able to catch him there."

"I wasn't looking for Garrus," Solana admitted, pushing herself closer. Alenko held a sweet little pistol in one hand and a completely underpowered scope-mod in the other. "Aren't you about to leave?"

He put down the scope—just as well, since she'd been about to snatch it out of his hand and _break_ it if he attempted to abuse such a nice piece of equipment with a modification so substandard—and said, "Cortez is just doing final checks and then we're off, yeah."

"No one's here?" Alenko reached for an even more wretched extended barrel and Solana leaned forward to bat it out of his hand. It clanged as it bounced off the bench and onto the floor. _Good riddance._ His eyes widened, but he didn't try to retrieve it. "I see you rate quite the going-away party."

"Ahh." If he'd had subharmonics, the meaning behind the vowel would've been clear, but as it was Solana had no idea. Perhaps humans didn't… say goodbye to their colleagues? Friends? Somehow she doubted that. In her albeit limited experience, humans tended toward the effusive where emotion was concerned. Before she could ask, he explained, "I went to see Tali before I came down here. No point pulling her away from engineering. Javik doesn't like anyone, except _maybe_ Shepard on a good day. Garrus gave me his orders, and the closest thing I'm going to get to well wishes. The rest of this crew, they… they're Shepard's people. I haven't really served with them. They don't—well. Doesn't much matter. I imagine they'll be more interested with what I bring _back_."

"Well," she said, "you've been the closest damned thing to a friend to me, so I'm here to send you off. And not just because I'm interested in your intel." She smirked. "Though, that said, I'm very interested in your intel."

His face did that human thing where the skin went momentarily a shade pinker. Funny, that. She supposed they must get used to it; she still found the change rather comical, though she didn't embarrass either of them by actually laughing. Then he said, "Is Brooks still under?"

Solana nodded. "I think the doctor intends to keep her that way until further notice, now that Shepard's… functioning. Uh, the Justicar is still in there, though. Glowing."

Human smiles, at least, were easy enough to understand. Solana supposed she was still missing about fifteen layers of possible meaning and significance, but this gesture merely struck her as kind. "Samara's not going to do anything to you."

Solana shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know. I have a long history of my curiosity getting the better of my good sense—my dad's words—and something tells me that fabled Code of hers doesn't look all that kindly on… curiosity."

"Shepard hasn't lost any crew to Samara's Code yet," Alenko reassured her. "And you've met Jack. And Grunt."

"Here's hoping you're proven right."

"Just try not to steal any of _her_ things."

"Borrow," Solana insisted. "_Improve_."

"I don't think it's considered an improvement if you don't give them back."

"My brother is a lying liar and has doubtless been spreading very nasty rumors about me for his own devious purposes."

Alenko snorted. "Solana, I saw you swipe that sniper rifle piercing mod just now. What is it? Level four?"

She retrieved the mod in question and replaced it on the bench.

Alenko kept staring at her. Pointedly. Sighing, she also fished the rarer and far more interesting level five thermal scope from beneath the thigh of her truncated leg. Instead of admonishing her, though, he only shrugged. "Shepard won't care, you know. You could cart most of this stuff off and she'd probably never notice, unless you started messing with _her_ gunsand _her_ mods."

He paused, rifling through another pile of gun mods. When it looked like he was going to go with a perfectly useless melee stunner, she made a disapproving noise and he dropped it, raising his eyes to meet hers.

She sighed and shook her head. "You good with that thing?"

He blinked at the change of subject and glanced down at the gun as though he'd never seen it before. "Sure."

Flicking her mandibles in amusement she appended, "No, I mean are you _headshot_ good with it?"

His shoulders straightened and his chin lifted. "I hold my own."

"Can I see it?"

He handed it over, and she couldn't help the pleased sound that escaped her. Most weapons, she could tell whose hands they were designed for. A turian might be able to use a salarian weapon and vice versa, but the weight and balance were never quite right. This gun wasn't turian. Or salarian. Or even human. It was so gloriously engineered she couldn't tell whose grip it was meant for, but it didn't matter, because it felt like it'd been designed for no hand but her own. "Spirits," she murmured, turning the weapon over before sighting down its length and pointing it across the empty bay. "That's a pretty little gun. Almost makes me wish I favored pistols."

"Let me guess," Alenko said, gesturing toward one of the racks against the wall, "sniper rifles, like your brother."

"Actually," she retorted pertly, "sniper rifles like my _mother_."

He chuckled. "My mistake. She must be a formidable lady."

"She was," Solana replied. She hadn't supposed a human ear could pick up the deep thrum of residual grief in her subharmonics, but Alenko's expression shifted and his shoulders slumped. Before he could apologize or offer condolences or pity her—_Spirits, _but she hated the pity—she gestured with his gun and said, "I've never seen one of these before. And that is, if I say so myself, saying something." She wanted—_badly_—to see how it actually handled, but the hold of a ship when the owner of the piece was half an hour out from mission departure was hardly the time. She sighed, lowering it again.

Alenko, much to her relief, went along with her change of subject. "It's a Spectre-grade Paladin V. But if you like rifles, you should see Shepard's Black Widow. Thing's almost as tall as she is and probably nearly as heavy. One shot, one kill. Damn near _anything_."

"You're kidding me. They improved on the M-98? My brother told me she had one of _those_, though from the specs I didn't think mere mortals could actually shoot that damned thing."

This time Alenko's smile was smaller, tighter. Sadder, she realized. "Your first mistake is thinking she's a mere mortal. Shepard's Shepard. The rules don't apply. Whether she might want them to or not."

Solana didn't know what to say to this, so she reached instead for the best pistol mod on the workbench, a fifth level cranial trauma system, with a particularly nice ultralight materials modification to offset the added weight. Alenko, watching her, made an appreciative noise in the back of his throat. If she'd had a few hours and some quiet, she could've cannibalized some of the more useless parts to throw together a spectacular sighting scope, too, but that would've entailed a lot more body work to make it fit right.

"Aim for the head," she said when she was finished, handing him his gun handle-first.

"That's… I've never seen anyone mod a gun like that."

She huffed a breath. "Believe me when I say it's nothing. Next time give me a day's warning."

Holstering the gun, he inclined his head. "I owe you one."

"Let me hold the Black Widow and we'll call it even. I don't even need to shoot it."

He chuckled. "Seems fair. Of course, Shepard'll have my head, or worse, if she finds—ah." The mirth died and his whole demeanor shifted so abruptly Solana was afraid she'd somehow broken him. "Right," he continued, after a very long moment. "Shepard's… isn't here." He ducked his head and turned a little pale. "Garrus has one. But I think he's got it up in the cabin."

Of course Shepard's gun was gone. She felt foolish for asking, but instead of adding to the sudden heaviness in the room, she tried one of her brother's tricks. Humor always seemed to work for him, even when, by all rights, it shouldn't have. Sitting back and crossing her arms over her chest she asked with mock indignation, "_Garrus_ has a Spectre-model sniper rifle? How'd he swing that?"

A flash of white teeth bared in a brief smile, and the weight of sorrow began to lift. Hell. Maybe her stupid brother knew what he was doing with the endless quips after all. "Nepotism?" He waved a hand dismissively. "I'm joking. Mostly. Shepard's all for following the rules unless she can't see a good reason why the rules exist. Turns out when you're the weapon the galaxy keeps pointing at the Reapers, she doesn't care so much about the letter of the Spectre-gear-for-Spectres-only law. She got the best equipment she could beg, borrow or steal, and she gave it to whomever needed it or could best use it." He laughed softly, shaking his head. "She spent _two hundred and fifty thousand credits_ on an M-11 Wraith at Spectre Requisitions, even though I don't think she's touched a shotgun since basic training. But Tali loves the stupid thing."

"I don't know if I'm more astonished that she'd do it, or that anyone—even Spectre Requisitions; _especially_ Spectre Requisitions—thought it was okay to charge _Commander Shepard_ anything. While she was, you know, busy trying to save the galaxy."

This earned a full laugh, nothing soft or restrained about it. "You make sure to give Shepard that opinion some time. She'll appreciate it. When tipsy, it's one I've heard her espouse herself. Usually accompanied by the violent application of a fist to the tabletop. She'll probably buy you a drink. Or, you know, some kind of overpriced weaponry." Still grinning, his fuzzy eyebrows doing incomprehensible things, he gestured toward her. "Okay, Solana. Not that I don't believe you're here to see me off, but do you want to tell me the rest yet? Because Cortez'll be ready to leave any minute."

"The rest?" she said uneasily.

"You and Garrus fidget the same way when you're nervous. I may not have Shepard's superhuman observational skills, but I've had ample time to note your brother's various and sundry neck rolls and mandible twitches." His smile was not unkind. "You'd probably be shifting from foot to foot if you were standing."

She opened her mouth to protest, but laughed instead. "Oh, you're right. I probably would. And you're right, my motives may be slightly—ever so slightly, mind you—ulterior."

"Mmm." The continued presence of his smile rendered the otherwise inscrutable noise friendly.

"My dad," she said. "You need to talk to him."

"So Garrus indicated."

"No," she insisted. "You need to talk to him about Garrus, too. I'd do it if I were going with you. My dad… look, my dad is _damned good_ at what he does, but he can't work without all the available information. I don't know what Garrus told you, but I'm saying you need to tell him _everything_. He'll probably make you repeat yourself a dozen times. Maybe two dozen. Don't get upset or offended; he sees things other people don't see, but sometimes the process is frustrating. For both sides." She smiled to steal the sting of seriousness from her words. "Every time we got in trouble as kids, the interrogation was worse than the punishment." Grave again, she added, "My dad might be leery about trusting you. Say Sol wanted you to talk to him. Call me Sol, not Solana. That'll mean something. And then tell him I will never try to make him eat velara fruit ever again if he gives you his full attention. All right? And just… please. Please don't leave—"

"Anything out," Kaidan finished for her. "I got it. Though, if it… if it makes you feel better, your brother gave me the same orders. Nothing about velara fruit. But he told me to be honest about everything as I saw and understood it, even if it wasn't complimentary."

"Oh, good," Solana breathed, the flood of relief nearly overwhelming. "It means he's—it's just good. That's all." She took a deep breath and tried with limited success to steady her shaking hands. "You're Alliance through and through, Major Alenko, and I'm turian—I know all about loyalty and honor above all else, I do. But I… I have to ask _Spectre_ Alenko for a favor."

"Ominous."

"You—did my brother tell you about Shepard's book? The one from the _Empire_?"

Alenko nodded, tilting his head in confusion. The head tilt was really very similar to the turian version; if she'd been less nervous, she'd have smiled at the abrupt species similarity. Instead she reached into her tunic and withdrew a tiny information chip. In spite of her best efforts, her hand still trembled as she reached for his hand, dropped the chip into it, and pressed his fingers closed around it. "I need you to take that to my dad. And I need you not to show it to anyone else. Not the admiral. Not the primarch. Not even your oldest friends. Until my dad gives them the okay, everyone is suspect."

Glancing down at his closed hand, Alenko frowned. "Have you considered that your dad might be compromised?"

"He isn't."

"Solana…"

She shook her head. "I know he isn't. He was _decades_ at C-Sec and never took a bribe or let something slide or took the easy way instead of the right one."

"That you know of."

"_Never_, Major. Not once. Look, I—I might not be in the Shadow Broker's league, but can we chalk my certainty up to the curiosity I mentioned earlier? I know my dad's clean. I know you can trust him. And I don't know about anyone else."

"You're trusting me."

She held out a hand. It shook. "It's costing me. And I hope I'm as right about you as I _know_ I'm right about my father."

He nodded grimly, but his response was forestalled by the crackle of the comms, and Shepard's voice saying, "Hey, Kaidan, you still down there?"

"Just about to leave. Cortez is giving me a thumbs up. Just letting Solana Vakarian give my Paladin a once-over."

"Ahh, Solana. Feel free to come up here and visit me later. I promise not to steal your chair." Shepard's laugh was tinny over the comm, but sounded no less sincere for it. "And as for you, Kaidan, Steve will get you there and back in one piece. It's just the politics you have to navigate on your own."

"That's the worst part."

"Isn't it just." A pause, but not the dead-silence pause of the comms being cut. "Kaidan, be careful."

"Always am, Shepard."

"You always are," she agreed. "But this time be even more careful, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"None of that now, Major."

Solana saw Alenko's soft, sad smile even though Shepard couldn't. "Aye, aye. Ma'am."

Shepard sighed, long-suffering. "Remember what I said."

"I will, Shepard. But you remember what _I_ said, too."

Solana wondered if, up in her cabin, Shepard was smiling a similar soft, sad smile; her voice sounded like it. "Godspeed, Kaidan. Shepard out."

Alenko bowed his head, and even though she wanted desperately to pry, Solana held her tongue. After a minute of watching Alenko wrestle with his thoughts, he lifted his head. "I'll take the information to your dad. I won't show it to anyone else." His eyes, when he looked at her, were damp, the corners tense and more deeply lined than they'd been only a moment before. "She'll be a friend if you need one. The best you can ask for. You can even love her, if you want; she makes it easy. But don't trust her. Not right now."

Solana nodded. Cortez poked his head out the fighter's side and yelled some phrase about burning daylight, and Alenko flashed him an _on my way_ hand gesture.

"Thank you, Major," Solana said quietly, sincerely. "And… and happy hunting."

He raised his eyebrows again. "Solana? You said I was the closest thing you had to a friend. But my friends don't call me 'Major.' They call me Kaidan."

Her mandibles flicked wide in a sheepish smile. "I'll work on it."

"That's all I ask." He holstered a battered old Vindicator to his back and rolled his neck. "See you soon. Two weeks. Maybe ten days, if we're lucky."

Her smile widened into a grin. "I'll have my leg by then, you know."

His face split in a similarly wide smile. "Then I expect to see you kicking ass and taking names—literally—when I get back."

All the gestures she knew—handshakes, hugs, back-patting, saluting—seemed wrong. She settled on a wave. Alenko—Kaidan—halfway to the shuttle, echoed it. When he ducked inside the little ship, she folded her still-shaky hands in her lap and thought what a tremulous thing hope was, to have so very much weight so constantly riding on it.


	35. Stay With Me

Garrus stood at the cabin door for a while before entering. Through the door, he heard the faint beat of music, though he was certain Shepard was sleeping. Doctor Chakwas had insinuated that, after her last visit a few hours ago, her patient would sleep a solid eight hours, whether she felt like it or not. The doctor had also hinted that perhaps Shepard was not the only one who required a medical helping hand in such matters, and Garrus pocketed the sedatives she offered without comment, not, of course, intending to take them.

Three days Alenko and Cortez had been gone. Given the speedy nature of the craft they'd borrowed from Samara, they were likely near Earth, if not arrived already. Garrus couldn't help feeling it was something of a—Shepard had a term for it, one she used most often when Hackett was directing her out to the middle of nowhere for no good reason—fool's errand. Still, any intel was better than no intel, and he had to hope Liara, at least, might have a stockpile of information she simply hadn't felt comfortable relating over the possibly-compromised QEC.

All he wanted was a direction to point his gun, and a target to shoot it at.

Even though he felt the weightiness of time passing without answers, three days was three days longer for Shepard to heal, and that counted for something. It had been nearly a week since she woke… as herself, and with no more of the devastating seizures resetting her progress, her cybernetic bone and muscle weaves were proving more up to the task of providing actual healing; Chakwas was pleased and insisted Shepard would certainly be back on her feet—_slowly and carefully and for very short periods of time_—within the week. ("Provided," she'd added with a glare, "my patient behaves herself and does not attempt to accelerate the timeline of recovery herself." Shepard had responded with a wide-eyed, penitent nod no one was taken in by; Garrus was pretty sure she'd already tried to hoist herself out of bed on more than one occasion while she had the cabin to herself.)

For three days, when he wasn't down in engineering helping Tali contain a series of escalating—though ultimately, Tali assured him, not ship- or life-threatening—drive core problems no doubt caused by the inadequate and hurried repairs, Garrus watched as his sister and Shepard bent their heads together over the damned book from the _Empire_, trying and failing to come up with a code that made sense of all the variables. They'd tried a number of things, using both the human alphabet and turian, but thus far without breaking the cipher. Occasionally his sister made Shepard laugh, but not enough. Never enough. In the brief interludes he spent in the cabin when they were both awake, he could see tension like a weight on Shepard's shoulders, and the creases in her brow were looking likely to take up permanent residence.

He hated that he was the source of at least some of those furrows. They were trapped in a terrible cycle, with too many aborted conversations and unspoken words between them. Every hour that passed made the inevitable conversation harder to start, and he knew she was waiting for him to do it. She'd spoken first, after all; she'd made herself clear. He could hardly expect her to keep throwing herself against his defenses, no matter how much she wanted answers.

He didn't know what to say, and so he said nothing at all. His hands ached to fix the broken thing between them, but it was so much more complicated than a Thanix cannon or a hiccuping drive core. He could out-calibrate a damned _geth _or a sentient dreadnought intent on his destruction, but he couldn't find a way to put _there's no Shepard without Vakarian_ back together again.

At least those ever-present worry lines smoothed when she slept. Reminding himself of this, he let himself into the cabin, and hated himself for thinking of the doctor's sedative as a reprieve.

Shepard, in bed but definitely awake, lifted her head at his arrival and smiled. It was a genuine smile, he knew, but not without cost, pain and pleasure mixed in equal parts.

Solana was gone, but Shepard still held the book and a little mirror on her lap, alongside several scribbled-on pieces of paper. "Hi," she said, pushing everything onto the bed beside her. "Long day?"

If he didn't pay attention to the brittleness of the smile, or the tentativeness never present before in her greetings, it was all so damned normal. And he couldn't tell if he dreaded that normalcy, or wanted it.

He was pretty sure the scale tipped toward _want._

"You're supposed to be sleeping," he accused lightly, coming to the top of the stairs.

"I spit them out," she said, waving a hand at the bedside table, where, sure enough, a couple of white pills lay, looking slightly the worse for wear. "After hiding them under my tongue."

Garrus snorted, reaching into his pocket and plucking out a pair of pale blue dextro pills, holding them up for Shepard to see. "Her first mistake was not giving you an injection. Her second was not physically forcing you to swallow."

"Right, and you're better?" Her smile turned soft as she lifted her chin, gesturing at his hand. "You're planning on choking those down like a good little turian?"

He sighed, sitting on the end of the couch and placing his pills in the middle of the low table. He stared at them, as if staring might make them disappear. Or might make him want to swallow them. "I think she's under the misapprehension that I _can't _sleep."

"When the truth is you don't want to?"

He glanced up, startled. She was looking right at him, expression so unguarded and wounded it made him shudder.

"She tried to give me an injection," Shepard explained, rubbing absently at her arm. "I panicked. Can you imagine?" Her laugh didn't sound all that amused. There was a faintly appalled undertone to it. "I fought a Reaper on foot. With a fancy _laser pointer._ And now, all of a sudden, I'm afraid of needles? _Needles._ Of all the stupid things."

A chill ran the length of his spine as he remembered that mostly-empty box of syringes from the _Empire_, and the… the blank-Shepard's reaction to Chakwas trying to inject her with painkillers in the medbay. Not that stupid, perhaps. At least this time Chakwas hadn't ended up with a broken nose and dislocated shoulder for her trouble.

"You're thinking this is something leftover from whatever they did to me on that ship," Shepard said. "Yeah. Same." She tilted her head back to stare out the window above her. "I'm afraid I'll sleep and when I wake up I won't remember again. Or you'll… you'll tell me I'm not myself, and I won't remember why you'd think that."

He swallowed hard. "I'm afraid of that, too."

"And then I'm afraid, whether I sleep or not, whether I'm me or not, you're always going to look at me the way you look at me now."

"Shepard," he whispered, like a plea, like a prayer. "I—I don't—"

"It's not your fault," she insisted, though her voice broke on the last syllable. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. She took a deep breath he could hear all the way from the couch, and balled her hands in the sheets at her sides. "I mean that. Y-you—you can't help what happened. I don't… I don't blame you. You know that, right? I can't… I don't _blame_ you."

Through it all, her eyes remained fixed on the stars. It reminded him uncomfortably of his sister staring at that full bottle of horrible brandy, wanting to drown her sorrows in it, or the way his whole world had narrowed to the view through his sniper scope on that perch in the base on Omega, before Shepard showed up. He knew Shepard had loved the stars once; he knew why she didn't anymore. She wasn't admiring a view; she was facing an enemy. Without even a fancy laser pointer. And she was doing it without anyone at her six.

After a deep breath of his own, he took the few steps necessary to cross the room. Lost in her private battle, she didn't acknowledge him until he sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, and touched his fingertips to the side of her face to bring her back. She blinked, finally pulling her eyes from the window above, and sucked in a great, gasping gulp of air, turning her face until her cheek was cradled in his palm. Her hand flew to her throat and then twitched as if she wanted to reach for him before falling back to her lap. It was, he realized, a strange backward echo of their final parting on Earth, only this time she was the one battle-broken, wounded, and pulled too early from a fight she so desperately didn't want to lose.

He, half-delirious with agony and denying he needed to leave at all, at least had Tali holding him up back then. Shepard was alone, once again drowning in the breathless void, trying to hold everything together with futile hands. And failing, because they both knew one person couldn't hold onto another if they weren't willing to be held.

"Oh, Shepard," he whispered.

"It surprises me to realize how happy I was. Before." She plucked at the fabric pulled taut across her lap, before continuing in a rush, "Not all the time, of course. Not when I was losing people or thinking about losing people or knowing losing more people was inevitable. Not, though I joke about it now, when I was fighting that Reaper on foot. Not when I was lying broken-legged in the elevator of a very unfriendly ship. But there were moments, Garrus, oh, there were moments, and they were worth all the rest. You were part of most of them. You _gave_ me most of them. I wish I could… I wish I could do the same, you know. For you. Now."

"You want to take me bottle-shooting on top of the Presidium?"

She smiled against his hand. "Hell, Vakarian, I'd even dance in public with you again, if I had working legs."

His _ha_ was only one soft exhalation, barely a laugh at all, but since any kind of laughter had been in short supply it felt twice as dear for having been hard-won.

"Or I could tell you to sleep," she said, with a touch more gravity. Her brow was furrowed again; he wanted to smooth away the tension with his thumb, wanted to ease grief and fear and worry with one of those moments of something like joy. "It would probably do you more good, in the long run. I could say something like, oh, I don't know, we both know you need a clear head? There's no room for mistakes?" The smile shifted toward wry; he wanted to stop it before it went bitter, but didn't know how. "I know where you sleep. I'll wake you if anything comes up?"

This time he laughed three _ha_s in a row.

Shepard, bolstered, insisted, "You can even take the bed. I've had my turn, and my bones can deal with the couch for a change."

"Don't worry about it," he said.

"Garrus—"

He swallowed, unable to still the nervous flutter of his mandibles. "There's plenty of room."

"Oh," she said, blinking, her pale cheeks flushing ever so slightly pink. "I—oh."

"Unless you—"

She shook her head a little, not enough to pull her face from the touch of his hand. "I only thought you—it's fine. Of course it's fine. My oversized bed is your oversized bed. We can even build a barrier of pillows, if you want."

He was close enough to hear her breath catch when he brought his brow to hers. He didn't close his eyes. Neither did she. "Shepard," he said, "tell me something true."

"This doesn't fix everything," she said after a moment's thought. "It… it might just be a bandage, but bandages are better than bleeding out?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "Sounds about right." Taking another deep, steadying breath, he admitted, "I… didn't… I didn't stop either. But I—it's—Shepard, I can't _promise_—"

"I know," she said. "I understand." She sounded like she did, and he found himself wondering if someone had, at last, given her a more thorough briefing than _you weren't yourself._ "I'm glad you're willing to try."

If anyone in the galaxy was worth trying for, it was her. He might doubt any number of other things, but he didn't doubt that.

After another long moment, he pulled away, but only to move to the other side of the bed. He curled up on top of the covers; she stayed beneath. They faced each other, though, and when he extended his hand, she met him halfway, weaving her fingers together with his. His thumb stroked the back of her hand like a meditation.

"Sleep well," she whispered, but he was already halfway dreaming and could not even find voice to wish her the same.


End file.
